Crescendo of the Moon
by Pixel-0
Summary: After a past hunt leaves both Sam and Dean wounded, a new threat emerges that preys upon their pains and weaknesses. Brother is pitted against brother, and the hunters themselves soon become the hunted.
1. The Cigarette

**Title:** Crescendo of the Moon

**Rating: **PG-13 for language, violence, and disturbing images

**Category:** Multi-chapter story falling in the action, drama, and angst categories. This probably will become an alternate universe (AU) story somewhere down the road. Although it's not too AU right now, there is a strong possibility of diverting from canon based on what has happened in my past stories.

**Author's Notes:** This one is in no way related to my two previous multi-chapter stories ("Quid Pro Quo" and "Sine Qua Non"), and this stands completely independent of those in every way.

Also, I want to thank my amazing beta for all her help. When I showed her my scribbled drafts, and I told her my complex plotlines, she helped me to take all those loose threads, tie them together, and make them into this story right here. She was also the one who asked me every night, without fail, if I had a title for this story so that I could quit delaying and start posting. I owe this girl big time.

**Disclaimer**: The following characters and situations are used without permission of the creators, owners, and further affiliates of the Warner Bros television show, Supernatural, to whom they rightly belong. I claim only what is mine, and I make no money off what is theirs.

* * *

"_He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby becomes a monster. __And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." _–_Friedrich Nietzsche_

"_Confront the dark parts of yourself, a__nd work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. __Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. __Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength." _–_August Wilson _

* * *

_One_

From the discarded cigarette a thin wisp of smoke rose high into the air, curling around the shadows of the solitary, paint-peeling building and caressing the curves of the bloated, low-hanging moon. The cigarette, still glowing vibrantly with seductive oranges, was quickly extinguished by the sharp grinding of a black boot against the cracking asphalt spotted with patches of gravel. As Dean uncapped the fuel tank on the Impala and inserted the gasoline nozzle, he gave one extra twist of his leather heel to reassure that the cigarette, carelessly left from another passerby near the working set of gasoline pumps, was ash. He then leaned back against the trunk of his car, hooking one ankle over the other and shoving a blood smeared hand into his pocket as he watched the numbers rise under the smudged screen with every gallon filling his car's belly. Fatigued and worn, he chewed on the edge of a callused finger, ignoring the dirt crusted over the edges of his skin and the dust dotting the light hairs on the back of his hands and arms.

There was a sharp click that seemed abnormally loud in the silent environment when the tank capped off, and Dean removed the still dribbling nozzle and placed it back on its holder at the gasoline pump with only a glance at the total he owed. Walking in long, tired strides to the entrance of the convenience store, he produced a credit card from his back pocket and ran the other hand through his hair, greasy from perspiration and lack of showering.

At the register in the starkly lit store the bleary-eyed clerk squinted in confusion at the disheveled man in the navy t-shirt, who wore bloody scratches and purple bruises, coming through his doors at two in the morning. Instinctively the clerk's hand moved below the counter where he kept a loaded pistol for moments where the skin around the back of his neck prickled cautiously. Dean gave a forced smile, sensing the man's discomfort, and after a moment of debating, he decided to pick up some food along with the outrageous gasoline total. As he tried not to limp from the wound on his leg down the aisles, too brightly lit with their artificial lights, he could feel the clerk's eyes, squeezed into his thick face, watching his every movement.

For himself, Dean poured an extra large paper cup full of hot black coffee from the steaming pots, and he discovered a frothy vanilla drink that would seem to fit Sam's tastes. After the drinks came the difficult task of deciding which artificially sweetened, plastic wrapped product would serve best as an after midnight snack. Dean sighed under his breath and decided to forego Sam's blatant wishes for them to eat healthily.

The clerk rang up Dean's total with a pudgy, nail-bitten finger hovering over each key in slow contemplation, and he packed the assortment of donuts and potato chips, chocolate bars and onion rings into a flimsy plastic bag. The two men didn't exchange words as Dean slid the credit card across the counter top at the clerk who gave it a dubious glance before scanning it. Finally the card was handed back to Dean, who was already gulping the scalding, bitter coffee with caffeine deprived gusto.

Dean unlocked the doors to the car, even though the windows had been left cracked to allow fresh air to roll through the vehicle in the desert heat. Although the temperature was considerably cooler at night than it had been during their day traveling, it was still warmer than what the brothers were readily accustomed to. In the Impala's passenger seat, Sam was sleeping, long tanned limbs twisted into a crude fetal position that didn't appear to be comfortable enough to allow him to sleep as peacefully as he had been for the last two hours. His face, dotted with traces of dark stubble, was pressed against the window, as his mouth hung open and his hands supported his drooped head. Expect for waking once or twice to glance over at Dean with pinched, watery eyes and ask how much longer until their next stop, Sam had been sleeping since they left the last city.

Still balancing the two drinks in his hands and the bag looped across his left wrist, Dean settled into the driver's seat and gave Sam a gentle nudge in the side with his elbow. Sam sprang awake, arms popping as if the tightened rubber bands on them had been cut, and he nearly hit the cups right out of Dean's hands. Dean yelled a curse when Sam came to realize where he was, peering at Dean through bloodshot eyes rimmed in crusted sleep and black circles.

"Dean?" His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat twice, while Dean closed the creaking driver's side door behind him.

"Geesh, what was that all about?" Dean replied with a bite that resulted from too many hours spent driving instead of quietly sleeping like his younger brother.

"I…I just didn't expect to be woken up, that's all. You…surprised me."

Dean snorted under his breath and mumbled words Sam didn't hear before he passed Sam the sweet-smelling beverage. "I got you something. Figured you were hungry."

"What is it?" Sam asked, shifting himself to a more upright position in the seat while accepting the paper cup from Dean.

"Don't know. Vanilla something. Looked like it was something weird you'd drink."

"So I'm not a coffee person, don't hold it against me." When Dean didn't respond, Sam pointed to the bag Dean had set between the two of them. "What else you get?"

"Name it. I don't know when we're getting to the next motel in this freakin' desert, so I picked up what I could."

Like a kid at Christmas, Sam dug his mud crusted fingers into the bag, rummaging through the various plastic items until he realized that the closest snack to healthy he was getting was the bag of beef jerky Dean had bought. Still grateful for the food with their last meal over twelve hours behind them, Sam sliced the plastic bag open with one of the more easily accessed knives and tore the thick chunks of meat ravenously with his teeth. Suddenly awake and starving, he alternated between gulping down the sweet drink and chewing the spicy meat. It was not normally a combination he would have enjoyed, but given the circumstances, it was the best thing he had tasted in a long time.

Seeing that Dean still had not started the car and was merely rubbing the side of his head with a grimace, Sam stopped eating long enough to ask if Dean was all right.

Dean shot a sideline glance back at Sam before responding, "Yeah, I—"

"You want me to drive?" Sam offered, still chewing on the other side of his mouth. A small voice reminded him not to talk with his mouth full, but as his time with Dean progressed, he found such trifle manners depleting in their constant company together and opening up into a closer bond of their private moments.

"No, I just—I think I hit my head funny or something. I've got a bitch of a headache."

"Did you have a concussion? You lost consciousness when you fell. It's a good possibility." Sam paused to swallow the mashed lump of jerky pressed against the side of his cheek. "I think you need to see a doctor. It could be more severe than we think—"

"Sam, stop. I'm fine…I just got a headache, that's all," Dean replied, although his voice sounded unsure with his statement.

Sam rolled his eyes dismissively, before sarcastically replying, "Sure, you say headache. I say concussion." He looked over at Dean, who was gazing out the window at the desert, one knuckle brought up to his mouth and the other hand resting on the steering wheel. "I can drive and let you sleep, y'know. It might do you some good."

"I know. I need to drive right now. Get my mind off this thing."

"The headache?" Sam asked, slightly confused as Dean normally was not the type of person to complain over a headache.

"No. Just…I'll catch some sleep later. There's nobody else out here anyway. The roads are empty, so I'll be fine. No risk of accidents." As if to officially end the conversation, Dean twisted the keys in the ignition with a harsh twist of his wrist, and the car growled to life. He pressed his foot a little harder than necessary against the accelerator, and the Impala lurched forward out of crumbling parking lot where it squealed when Dean turned out of the gas station onto the empty road.

Sam remained quiet until he finished his food, shoving the plastic wrappers into his empty cup, and then he dozed off some time later, leaving the interior of the car with a faint vanilla and chocolate scent that could not be wiped away by the wind. With the window rolled down, Dean drummed his fingertips against the outside of the car's metallic body, catching the warm breeze between the spaces of his worn fingers. Although the radio was turned down far enough to transform the guitar anthems into lullabies so that Sam could sleep, Dean could still hear the familiar melodies in his mind and hummed along quietly.

Dean drove the Impala down the barren roads with only one hand on the steering wheel and eyes scanning the wide field in front of him that the headlights illuminated. Crawling across the road, a black lizard flecked with orange and yellow emerged into the Impala's path. Not wanting to hit the reptile and dirty his car, Dean slowed the vehicle down long enough to allow the creature to scuttle across the road into the dark and rolling sand. As soon as the lizard disappeared and Dean resumed his speed, he had forgotten about the incident all together. However, the creature's small yellow eyes watched the red taillights fade into the infinite night, and the lizard gave a flick of its long purple tongue. Against scaled black lips, a smile formed on its face.


	2. The Hunt

_Two _

Forty-five minutes after they had left the gasoline station, the brothers arrived at a long forgotten motel clustered amongst a set of dwindling buildings painted ashen gray in the milky light of the moon. Dean nudged Sam awake, and then he walked inside the motel by himself while Sam gathered their duffel bags and a few of the less conspicuous weapons. While there were other cars in the parking lot, the Impala alone wore an out of state license plate. The only sound across the flat land was the murmured crunching of fine gravel beneath Sam's feet as he followed Dean through a flimsy screen door into the darkened lobby.

Dean had to awaken the motel owner, who did not appreciate being roused and thus threatened Dean with a wave of his antique shotgun. However, Dean was undisturbed by the firearm and, along with a convincing lie to evoke sympathy, handed the man a thick fold of bills on top of the credit card. Although the owner was in his pajamas, the money proved to be the extra incentive Dean had hoped for to get a room at such an obscene hour. Before handing Dean the key, the man gave a dubious glance from one bleary-eyed brother to the next. He muttered their room number under his whiskey roughed voice and moved stiffly with arthritic joints back to his own bed.

Limping slightly himself, Dean walked to their room with Sam, still rubbing his heavy eyes with the edge of his hand, not far behind. The mahogany paint had peeled off in thick flakes on the edges of the doorframe, and the hinges were so sticky with age that Dean had to aggressively shove the door open with his shoulder. Inside, the room smelled of dust and mildew, causing Sam to wonder if they were the first guests the beds had seen all decade. Such matters, however, did not appear to concern Dean, who flung the motel keys onto what appeared to be a table in the corner shadows of the room. While Sam struggled to close the door and slapped the wall in search for a light switch, Dean tumbled in a pile of sore, bloody limbs onto the small bed, heedless to his dirty clothes he was still wearing. Sam gave a disgruntled sigh at his older brother's habits, but he decided not to turn on the light, knowing how exhausted Dean was and how generous he had been in letting Sam sleep in the car. Instead of unpacking as he had wanted, Sam kicked off his shoes laced with the desert's sand, peeled back the covers off the stale-smelling mattress and fell asleep effortlessly.

When Sam awoke the next morning well before Dean, there was sleep crusted around the corners of Sam's eyes and his hair was flattened at odd angles against his head. Dandelion yellow sunshine illuminated the room well enough through cream colored curtains for Sam to see his duffel bag, thrown carelessly at the foot of the bed, and find a pair of track pants and faded t-shirt. Since there were naturally no courtesy notepads in the room, he dug through his wallet until he found an old receipt, on which he scribbled a quick note to Dean that he was out, would be back soon, and was safe. Even though he doubted that Dean would be functioning, let alone out of bed, before he returned, Sam nevertheless placed the note by the lamp on the bedside table and exited the room.

Despite the crisp brightness of the sun, the heat was still not completely unbearable in the early hours of the day, and it even felt soothing to Sam as he jogged down the road. While he enjoyed his morning runs and used to take one every day at college when the only eyes watching him were those of the dotted dew droplets on the grass, he noticed that exercise routines were becoming fewer as his trips with Dean grew longer. It had been over a week since his last jog, and that was largely because their most recent hunt had occupied nearly every waking moment they had.

A bead of sweat skittered over Sam's eye ridge, and he was pleased to feel the low ebb of a familiar burn in his muscles. Unconsciously, his thoughts rolled from the barren desert environment back to the last town. Combination of an angry spirit wreaking havoc on a family's house while also possessing the same family members had truly been nothing out of the ordinary in supernatural terms when Sam looked back on the events. Nevertheless, what was bothering him and still clearly eating away at Dean was the death of the mother in the family. She had been a single mother, divorced less than a year, with two children. The daughter was the older of the two, approximately fourteen years old, and the son had not been more than ten.

Although he tried to convince himself that there had been nothing either Dean or he could have done to prevent the death, Sam continued to feel a heavy weight pressing on his heart as he jogged down the empty road. Sam had been out of the house at the time of the poltergeist's final attack, trying to locate the daughter who was spending the night at a friend's house out of fear that the spirit would possess her while she resided in her own home. Loaded with rock salt and Latin phrases, Dean had been left in the house with the mother and her son, simply waiting for either Sam's return or the poltergeist's raid. The ghost had never bothered the family when they were separated, and there had been no reason for both of the brothers to retrieve the daughter. The daughter needed to be at the house so the spirit would become agitated enough to attack, and then with her returned, along with Sam, the paranormal being could be expelled. Both of the brothers had, in unknowing naiveté, seen this as the best possible solution. Sam was capable on his own, especially if it was just one girl, and Dean had been hunting long enough to take care of himself.

However, things had gone terribly wrong when the ghost attacked while the family was separated. Dean had not told Sam everything that had happened during the assault, and Sam knew that he probably never would, but from what had been shared, Sam understood that Dean's abilities were no match for the strength of the spirits. The ghost in the house had begun to tear up the floorboards and to smash open holes in the walls where it sealed the small boy behind the drywall. Objects had been flying around the room, and Dean, Sam could only assume, had done his best to protect the mother and her son at the same time. Sometime during the violent assailment, Dean had fallen through the main floor into the basement level where he was knocked unconscious when one of the walls caved in on top of him.

This was where Sam, after battling against some minor spirits at the house entrance, found Dean when he came back with the daughter. The son, who was still alive and had been pulled from behind the wall by Dean, was curled into a corner and crying hysterically. Although he was dotted with bruises and had a few scratches, he was essentially unharmed. The mother was dead, garroted by a metal coat hanger in the back closet where she had been tossed. Sam blamed himself for not arriving soon enough, as her skin was still warm to the touch by the time he broke the hinges off the main door of the house to enter, armed with two guns and prepared to kill. But she had been dead, and although there was nothing more that could be done for her, Sam attended to her surviving children and Dean as best he could.

Sam was convinced that Dean had most likely suffered a concussion to a degree because he had not only been initially unconscious, but also dizzy and confused upon awakening. Yet the only visible wound he allowed Sam to see was the one on his leg where the poltergeist had stabbed him with a kitchen blade. If there were other marks, as Sam believed there were, Dean refused to admit to any pain and threw himself into tending to the children. They had taken the children to their father's house, who thanked the Winchesters profusely with tears in his eyes that Sam was surprised to see for an ex-wife.

Sam pushed the damp hair out of his eyes as he moved back towards the motel room in long strides and continued to reflect on the latest case. Ever since they had left the city, Dean had been strangely quiet, and Sam figured that it was not only the woman's death on its own, but the idea of a loss of a mother to her children that was bothering Dean. It was no secret that Dean permitted their own mother's death to continually eat away at him, as if to find the inner strength to maintain their father's quest for demonic revenge. If Dean were to allow himself to heal again and move forward with his life, perhaps he would not have been as personally passionate about the cases. Then again, Sam thought, maybe he still would be. Sam didn't think that he would ever be able to figure Dean out without Dean letting him, and it didn't take much further contemplation to know that such a personal revelation from Dean was not going to occur anytime soon.

As he entered the motel parking lot, Sam slowed to a steady walk to catch his breath until he reached their room's door and gave a sharp twist on the unlocked handle. Dean was standing between the beds and shoving clothes around in his duffel bag with his back to the entrance when Sam opened the door. The sharp squeal of the hinges caused Dean to whip around with a knife in his hands, wet from an apparent shower and wearing only his faded blue jeans. His look quickly went from alerted anger to embarrassed shock when he realized that the person coming into the room was just Sam. Desperately, he began to scramble for a shirt to conceal his skin.

"What the hell are you doing back already?" Dean muttered to the duffel bag, clasping his one of his arms across his chest and digging with the other hand through the assortment of clothes.

However, he had not been quick enough to cover himself because Sam had already seen the deep purple bruises flowered over Dean's skin and several bright, red abrasions running alongside Dean's faded white scars. Such war marks made Sam's own scratches from the smaller spirits appear as childish crayon scribbles.

"Dean?" Sam asked, approaching his brother, who twisted himself into a fresh shirt with a grimace from the movements of his hurt muscles. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," Dean shot back, moving away as Sam came closer.

"No, you're not. I didn't realize that you were…well, so badly injured."

"Dude, I'm fine. Drop it, all right?" They were squeezed into the narrow space separating the two beds, and in order to leave, Dean would either have to climb over the beds or push past Sam's large frame, neither making for an easy escape and avoidance of the conversation.

"You sure you don't have any internal bleeding?"

"I think I'd know by now if I had internal bleeding," Dean responded, glaring up at Sam. "It's just some bruises. Move it or else."

"Or else what? You're going to cut me with that knife? I'm just worried is all."

"Yeah? Well, worry about someone else for a change. I don't need to be taken care of." As best he could, Dean shoved past Sam and crossed the room in bare feet to the table where he busied himself in shuffling their limited possessions to evade eye contact.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Sam repeated again, looping his arms over his damp shirt.

"What do you care? You weren't there anyway—"

"We agreed that's what was best."

"Yeah, I know we did!" Dean barked, his head snapping up to meet Sam with blazing eyes.

"I came as fast as I could, I would have been there—"

"No! You _weren't _there when everything fell apart, Sam!" Violently, Dean jabbed a scabbed finger in Sam's direction. "You weren't there to listen to that kid screaming when that damn spirit took his mother away and killed her! You weren't there! You didn't have to fight off that poltergeist, knowing that if you didn't get killed, that mom sure as hell would, and you were going to have to be the one to break the news to her son! All right? You want to know what happened? _That's_ what happened, Sam!"

Sam, gut punched by Dean's uncharacteristic revelation, said nothing and tried to approach once again. His words were quiet and seemed to lack conviction when he spoke, "Dean, I'm sorry."

Dean held out his hand to prevent Sam from coming closer, not facing his younger sibling. "So am I. Just…leave me alone. Give me that much, okay?"

As much as he wanted to sit beside Dean and make his brother talk, Sam nodded blankly, found a clean pair of clothes, and disappeared into the shower. Outside the shower, Dean slumped against the table, knees buckling underneath him and heart dropping down from his chest. His mind was littered with the son's screams that blended with Sam's own infant cries from twenty years ago when another mother died far too young.


	3. The Bar

_Three_

Sam emerged from the shower, hair still dripping down the back of his neck and dotting the collar of his clean shirt with dark water spots. Dean had moved from his brooding table position to a nonchalant recline on the bed, where he punched the television remote to alternate between the local weather channel and an unrecognizable movie that appeared to be made two decades ago. Sam knew that the subject of the last hunt had been dropped entirely, and if he were to bring it up again in a further attempt to help, it would merely be asking for trouble because Dean had divulged all that he wanted to. So Sam brought out his laptop, noticing with a small sigh at how its condition was quickly dilapidating from one trip to the next. Even though he tried to keep his computer in good condition as if a reminder of the normal life he had once had, such worries were shifting to the back of his mind when his forefront concerns resided in the fate of human lives.

Sam sat down at the table and turned on the computer, the sound of its small fan's humming drowned out by Dean's program. Since there was no available Internet connection for Sam to research with, he settled on playing a trivial game, lamenting that he hadn't downloaded anything fun when he had the chance. He had just beaten the computer for the second time at a card game, when Dean spoke from the bed, "We've got to get some cash."

"Yeah?" Sam responded with a furtive glance towards Dean who still had not removed his eyes from the television screen. The balding meteorologist waved his hand towards a map of red and blue waves riding over the digital states before he reported temperatures higher than any the brothers had seen since leaving the Midwestern states. Sam struggled to remember the last time he had seen triple digits on the Fahrenheit scale.

"I need pocket cash," Dean continued, apparently unfazed by the brutal weather conditions. "Credit cards are nice and all, but hell, it's kinda difficult to bribe someone waving a piece of plastic in front of their face."

"So…" Sam drummed his fingers over the faded keys of the computer. While he sensed what Dean was planning, he had a silent hope that he was wrong about his brother's motives yet again.

Dean sighed heavily. "Have you learned _nothing_ all this time?" He allowed a long pause for Sam to come to the own realization of what he was thinking.

"Not the bar," Sam replied, although his words came out as more of a whine that quickly embarrassed him. "Dean, those places are so… sleazy, and it's just wrong."

"Wrong? Dammit, it's cash, and if I hustle a bit, what's the big deal? We gotta eat too, y'know."

"You're cheating people out of their money."

"You're choosing _now_ to give me a lecture on morals? I thought we covered this 'bout five cities ago."

"No. I'm not lecturing you because you wouldn't listen anyway."

Dean nodded to affirm the idea, and then laughed. "Damn right I wouldn't. I'm glad we're agreed on this, then. Bar tonight it is."

As Sam rolled his eyes and muttered a sarcastic comment under his breath, Dean pretended not to notice and changed the channel back to the movie. While the female actress bemoaned her life and her boyfriend offered comfort, Dean slipped down further onto the bed. Less than a half an hour later, he was sleeping soundly, sunk into the flat mess of pillows on the bed. It wasn't until the movie had ended to spin into infomercials that Sam rose from his computer. Gently, he took the remote from his brother's limp hand and turned off the television himself.

The bar they visited later that night was just as seedy as Sam had expected and just as enjoyable as Dean had hoped. Dean, sensing that the pool game was already in his favor, swaggered around the table cockily. Ignoring the four inch gash in his right calf muscle, he snapped on his heels in a pompous sort of way as if to demonstrate to the other players his superior skills. When he leaned over the green table with his gray shirt spotted dark around the neckline with perspiration and stretched taunt across his injured back muscles, he sent the colored balls spiraling with sharp cracks into their respective pockets. It seemed like it had been forever since he had played a good, rough game of pool, and at last, he could forget all the troubles from the days past. Cold, golden alcohol and dog-eared dollar bills would help to assuage the pain. The harder the pain ate at him, the harder he would push it away.

The man playing against Dean was shorter than him, but at least fifty pounds heavier, and he was clearly becoming frustrated over his loss towards this smug kid younger than him. But there were seventy-five dollars already in question over the game, and neither Dean nor his opponent was willing to back down now. As the man bent down to look at the striped balls, Dean rested his hands on the bottom of the cue.

"Take your time," he smirked to the man. "I'll wait."

The man looked up from beneath his maroon baseball cap and glared.

Across the room from the pool table, Sam was nursing his first beer with his back to the commotion Dean was causing. Since arriving at the pub, Sam had only seen his older brother during the brief moments Dean sauntered back to the bar a few times to purchase another beer. Dean's absence provided Sam with the time he wanted to thumb through the local newspaper for any stories that could point to supernatural occurrences. However, he had been unable to find anything of interest, and he assumed that if they visited the library tomorrow, he would be able to use the Internet to scour other sources for a new case so Dean and he could leave the godforsaken town. For the time being, Sam resorted to reading a local woman's editorial about her lost cat.

Sam was still not finished with his drink when Dean approached and grabbed Sam by the forearm. His eyes were blazing happily and his skin glistened with perspiration. When he spoke, Sam could smell the bittersweet scent of alcohol on his breath and the muddy odor of cigarette smoke in his hair. "I think," Dean said, fumbling with a crumpled assortment of bills in his hand, "we need to get going for the night." Sam followed Dean's gaze to the angry men by the pool table, one of which tapped his cue stick against his hand threateningly.

"I think I can agree with that," Sam replied, nodding his head quickly. Dean was already out the door by the time Sam swung his legs off the stool and exited the bar into the night.

Back at the motel, Dean counted out his winnings on his bed, dividing the bills into their respective piles before he gave a pleased declaration of the total. Not long after he put the money away, he climbed back under the covers and fell asleep faster than Sam assumed he would have been able to, given all the hours of sleep he had already accumulated that day. Sam finished reading the newspaper and glanced over at Dean, who was breathing easily with one hand slipped beneath his pillow where he kept his large knife. Quietly, Sam folded the paper, turned off the lights, and pulled the blankets around his body.

It was hours later when he was jolted from the shrouds of sleep by the cursed screams of pain. The bellows were torn and throaty, yet familiar in their timbre. Something hard fell against the ground and there was a hissing sound. Again, a deep cry of pure agony followed, "Sa-_am_!"

Sam jerked upright in his bed, heart flying out of his chest in panic.

Dean.

He turned to face Dean's bed to see a large shape hunched above his older brother, snarling with every punch and kick Dean threw. Still partially disoriented from the sudden snap into the waking world, Sam groped with thick, stubborn fingers under his bed for the gun.

Against Dean's face, the creature's breath was wet and thick with the scent of decaying flesh. When Dean struggled to reach for the knife under his pillow, the monster snatched Dean's wrists in one of its fists to pin both of his hands above his head. Dean attempted to bring his legs up from underneath him to kick the beast off, but doing so proved futile. The shadowed attacker not only outweighed him, but was also incredibly strong and resilient, and Dean's efforts were no more effective than if the monster had been made from stone. Suddenly, the creature swung its head down and plunged its long teeth into his chest. Dean screamed, arching his back and thrashing his body wildly against the pain. The abrupt anguish was so overwhelming that when there was an explosion of thunder, he thought he was imagining the blessed sound of a gun.

The monster's head lurched up, Dean's blood dripping from its fangs onto his face, and it uttered a high pitched shriek that rattled the walls. As it scuttled off Dean's chest, Sam aimed the gun and fired again. Moving faster than either of the brother's eyes could follow, the creature disappeared out the opened door into the night with a continued angry snarl. By the time Sam ran to the doorway, gun still in hand, the beast was already gone to the protection of the night.

He stood for a minute in the doorway until he heard Dean's voice, pinched and breathless, from behind him. "Well, don't just stand there, dumbass…Give me a hand, will ya?" As if waking from an intoxicating dream, Sam fumbled with the light switch and hurried back to Dean, who was already sitting up and examining the marks across his left pectoral muscle. Even before he came close, Sam knew that the wounds, although sizable in surface area, were not deep enough for any serious blood loss. From one of their bags, he produced a first aid kit and sat down on his own bed across from Dean.

"What the hell was that thing?" Sam asked, as Dean greedily snatched the wad of scratchy tissues from Sam and began to blot away the blood.

"Something with a nasty bite, I know that much."

"Could you tell what it looked like?"

"Sam," Dean stated with a raised eyebrow of annoyance towards his brother, "I was getting attacked by a giant mutant monster in the dark. Last time I checked, I don't see in the dark, so what do you think?" He paused and rubbed dots of antibiotic ointment over the gashes, wincing only slightly at the pain. His breathing was becoming more evened and relaxed as he continued talking. "Nice shot, though, for being half blind and all 'cause I think you hit it."

"Yeah," Sam agreed, taking the bloody wads of tissues from Dean and handing him a strip of butterfly bandages to seal the wounds closed. They sat in silence until Sam leaned across the bed where he noticed splashes of the creature's blood on the beige colored sheets. Intermingled with the darkening crimson spots, there appeared to be several flecks of skin. "What the hell?" Sam whispered as he picked up the pieces and brought them closer to the bedside lamp.

The pieces were scale like in texture, approximately as big as some of the guitar picks Sam had seen in college. Under the bright illumination, they caught the light and threw it against the walls with their green tones. Rubbing the pad of his thumb over one of the scales to wipe away the blood, Sam felt the silken texture of the offset shaped triangle.

"Looks like snake scales," Sam commented.

"That wasn't any damn snake jumping on my chest, though," Dean replied. "Snakes don't have legs, college boy. Think bigger. Reptile, yes, but we're talkin' big." He took the scale from Sam, and his eyes abruptly grew wide as if he had just touched a hot stove. Immediately, his mouth began to twist in the formation of a scream while his hands trembled violently. Frantically, Sam clutched Dean's wrist and pried the scale from his brother's fingers.

"Dean?" When there was no response, Sam raised his voice, "Dean!"

Dean gave a jerked motion of his limbs, as if he was awakening from a different state of consciousness. He blinked rapidly, allowing his eyes to skitter over the walls before resting back on Sam. "Yeah? What?"

"You okay? You kinda went out of it there."

"Fine, just…twisted funny. The bite marks hurt really bad."

"You're such a liar."

Dean shook his head, struggling to clear it before glancing back at Sam who looked at him through large, brown eyes, pinched around the edges in worry. Even if Sam did suspect that something was amiss, Dean could never admit to it. Sam must always be kept safe, no matter what would happen to Dean. "You'll never prove it, though."

Sam gave an exasperated sigh of defeat and decided to change the subject. "How big?"

"What?"

"The creature. How big was it?"

Dean shrugged and looked back at the shallow teeth marks where the white butterfly bandages kissed his tanned skin. "Probably 'bout your height, heavier though."

"Over two hundred pounds?"

"Maybe. I couldn't tell. I wasn't up for taking stats when it had its jaw in my chest."

Sam waited a beat before speaking again. "I take it we've got some research to do, then."

Dean looked up from his chest, refusing to acknowledge how close he had come to tasting death yet again. Briefly, he thought of what he had experienced when he touched his mutant attacker's scale and how his entire world had turned upside down during that moment. Instead of dwelling on such negativities, he forced a smile for Sam's sake and slapped his younger brother on the knee, while he rose to his feet. "That we do, Sammy. Time to get back to business."


	4. The Laboratory

_Four_

The next morning, Dean stood in the bathroom after showering and examined his wounds in the daylight. For as much pain as he had felt when the creature had attacked him, he was surprised to discover the marks were fairly shallow. His skin, as if to prove the superficiality of the cuts, was already stitching itself together into pink and swollen blotches. He was still confused about why it felt as though the creature had been scraping its teeth against his ribs. But what troubled him the most was what he had avoided with Sam the previous night.

Alone in the growing sunshine, he felt safe to recall the sensations that he had fallen under when he had touched the monster's iridescent scale. There had been the sound of something wet and thick being torn, flesh from muscles, and a child had cried in a high pitched shriek of fear. He had heard the frantic beating of his own heart that had encompassed everything when he picked up the scale. While the beating of his heart grew to a deafening volume, he had felt hot blood running over his limbs as if he had been cut on his entire body. Tracing the elliptical holes on his skin, he continued to hear a strange rasp of a voice through his head. Even though it wasn't in any language created by humans, he understood its message nonetheless. The words told of death over all. He couldn't even form sentences from what he refused to believe the large reptile had supposedly told him. Yet, like an unforgettable nightmare, the words nibbled on the edges of his pained mind.

The child's wailing would not stop.

Haphazardly, he grabbed the edges of the toilet and vomited his last meal, sickened by the intoxicating sounds running through his memories. His breathing was sharp and quick, and he struggled against the weight of his own chest to inhale. When he at last stood to wash off his face at the sink, fighting off the rising nausea, he glared at himself in the mirror to gain control of the situation again. By the time Sam knocked on the bathroom door to ask if he was okay, Dean's hands were trembling so badly he shoved them in his pockets to avoid questions.

When Sam had picked up breakfast at a local coffee shop while Dean was in the shower, he had learned from the young waitress that there was a local community college less than thirty miles from the motel. As Dean drank the black coffee Sam offered him, Sam explained that they needed to go the biology lab to ask one of the professors about the scale. It was the only way they would be able to fully examine it and know what they were against. To Sam's surprise, Dean didn't argue with his plan or even make a snide comment about Sam's need for a return to a collegiate environment. Dean simply replaced the lid on his coffee, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and grabbed his keys. He stood to his feet, a little uneasily at first, but Sam assumed that being attacked in the middle of the night would do that to a person, and Dean asked, "You ready to go or what?"

Sam forced himself not to gape at his brother's sudden ability to cooperate without an argument.

At the campus, Sam, who was already accustomed to college life, did the majority of the talking, while Dean gazed at the sun through the tinted windows and chewed on his lower lip uncomfortably. The names of the courses Sam rattled off with such ease only further convinced Dean that students had their own secret language. Even with the biology professor they managed to find, Sam talked easily and casually enough to give the appearance of a well-meaning student. Fortunately, though, the professor believed Sam's ramblings and took them to one of the open laboratories where he viewed the scales under a microscope.

The professor, a man with balding silver hair, muttered to himself as he adjusted and fussed with the lens of the microscope. When he stopped turning the dials, gave several unintelligent grunts, and then said, "Well, that's interesting."

"Interesting?" Dean quipped after remaining silent for long. "Interesting how?"

The professor looked up in slight surprise, seeming to notice Dean for the first time since the brothers had approached him after his lecture had ended. "Where did you boys say you got these?" he asked, ignoring Dean's question and looking at Sam instead.

"In the desert," Sam quickly answered. "We were doing some research on the, um, the different families of lizards in the area and found these on the ground. We didn't recognize them…and hoped you might."

The professor pursed his lips and removed his glasses from his face. He rested one hand on the black laboratory table and picked up the scale with a long pair of dissection tweezers in the other hand. Turning the scale over in the light, he looked back at the brothers. "Well, I have to admit, I've never seen anything like these before."

Sam shook his head, confused. "What do you mean?"

"I've been doing lab work a long time in this field. Thought I'd seen every kind of reptile out there, but this?" he said, with a dramatic gesture at the glittering scale that caught the light and scattered it across the tiled floor. "This is something completely new."

"So, you don't know what kind of creature it came off?" Dean asked.

"No, I'm afraid I don't. And I'd tell you to go to somebody else, but I don't think there's anybody else in the nearby area who can answer your question. Not only is the scale larger than any of the lizards' around here, but the coloring and texture are incredibly unique as well." Seeing that Sam and Dean were not following him, he explained, "Have you ever seen a lizard, or even a snake perhaps, shed their skin?"

"Yeah," Sam answered, "it's white."

"Exactly. Those come off as if in one piece, white and thin strips. Scales don't normally fall off until they're ready to be shed. Like hair, really. Also, the fact that this one is so, well like I said, it has a unique color to it like I've never seen." He paused and rubbed his thumb over the top. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say it belongs to something else entirely."

"What's that?" Dean pressed.

The professor chewed on the end of his glasses in frustrated contemplation before speaking. "It's nothing." He gave a half-hearted laugh that sounded bitter. "Not something an educated man of science would say."

"We'd still like to hear your opinion. At least as a suggestion," Sam replied, using his most convincing tone possible.

The professor sank down onto one of the nearby stools, crossing his corduroy legs over one another after he had sat. He stared down at the scale, which was nearly as large as his thumb and when it caught the light just right, it shimmered across the tanned skin of his face. Then, hesitantly, he looked back up at the boys and ran a hand through his graying hair before answering. "Dinosaurs."

"Dinosaurs?" Sam echoed.

"The only time I've ever seen a scale this big is when I went on an expedition with a friend of mine. A paleontologist, that is. We found some scales encased in amber there, and this, well, this looks just like those. Except this is clearly new and in such good condition, I just…"

"Is it possible that there's still creatures like dinosaurs out there?" Sam asked.

The man shook his head. "No, not that we don't know about. These lizards would have to be bigger than anything around here." He looked at Sam and gave him a curt nod. "Based on the size of this scale, it'd be probably about as big as you, I'd imagine, and how could we not notice something like that?"

Dean shot a raised eyebrow over to Sam, and Sam knew that he was thinking back when such a creature had attacked him so precisely with possible fatal aims.

Seeing that the professor was becoming more distressed as he thought about the situation, Sam extended his hand politely. "Well, my friend and I here have to get going. We've got class to catch."

"Oh, yes, yes," the professor replied, seeming to snap out of his troubled state. "I'm sorry about all that talk about dinosaurs and what not. I think all the books are getting to me." He forced a laugh as he shook Sam's hand and gave the scale back to him. "I'd suggest taking that to the state university to see if they know more than me. It'd be a longer drive, but if you really want to know, that'd be the right path."

Sam nodded politely. "Thank you for your time, sir." Dean, too, thanked the man, and they exited the laboratory together as Sam handed the scale to Dean who, careful not to touch it with his bare fingers, returned it with the others in the plastic bag in his pocket.

"So, dinosaurs, huh?" Dean said. "How off do you think he was?"

"I don't know," Sam admitted. "But you saw the guy. Either he's completely crazy or something, because the idea really upset him."

"You saw how big that bitch was last night, Sam. It took up more of the bed than I did. I've got a bite mark larger than half my chest, so we're dealing with somethin' big."

Sam shook his head. "It doesn't make sense. Dinosaurs."

"Maybe it's not dinosaurs, Spielberg."

"What?"

"_Jurassic Park?_ Steven Spielberg? That movie was freakin' awesome."

"Oh, yeah," Sam replied, feeling slightly embarrassed that he hadn't made the connection instantly when Dean had first made the comment.

As they exited the air conditioned building into the harshly lit sun again, Dean pulled a pair of sunglasses from his jeans pocket and his keys from the other. He missed the presence of his coat with all of its convenient pockets, but considering the heat, his leather jacket just was not feasible to wear.

"So," Sam began, as Dean unlocked the car, "what do you think we're dealing with?"

Dean, eyes guarded by the black frames, looked over the hood of the car at Sam and frowned in confusion. "Not sure. Never seen or heard about anything like this. All I know is that it's big, pissed off, and probably after us." He fought back the blasting of the screaming child and the deafening beating of his heart he had heard when he first touched the scale, and he slapped the car's hood in mock bravado. "Let's rock 'n roll."


	5. The Whisper

_Five_

Sam wanted a different motel room, even in a different state, to stay at, not liking the idea of being eaten in the middle of the night. Dean, on the other hand, refused to leave, arguing that he had already dropped serious cash to bribe the man into getting their room in the first place and that if there was something out there, then he was going to be the one to kill it. Let it come to them, he argued.

With that said, Sam turned to look at Dean in the car when they parked back at the motel. "Let it come to us?" Sam echoed incredulously, his voice rising in pitch as he stepped out of the Impala "That's got to be the dumbest idea we've had yet. And we've had some _really_ dumb ideas before."

"And why's that?"

"Then we're playing by its rules, and we don't even know what those rules are, let alone what _it_ is. We should get a new place, then, if we really _have_ to, study it from afar before we move in for the kill. This is just asking for trouble."

Dean laughed, and he popped the trunk latch with a muffled click. His dark glasses caught the pieces of the sun as he turned his head in Sam's direction. Sam squinted against the light, but Dean, except for where the sun reflected off his glasses and ring, had disappeared into the sun. "Oh, Sammy," Dean responded, examining his prized collection of weapons in the shadows of his trunk, "I don't _ask_ for trouble, I demand it."

Exasperated by his brother and knowing that with the keys in Dean's possession, they weren't leaving the motel anytime soon, Sam rolled his eyes with a dismissive shake of his head. However, Dean ignored Sam's frustration and shoved a chunky bag at him, who looked down at it in bewilderment. "What the hell?"

"Weapons," Dean replied, stepping out of the sunlight so Sam could see him clearly. "Lots of weapons. If Godzilla thinks I'm going to be his next Lunchable, then he's got another thing comin'." Dean grinned, his teeth dazzlingly white against tanned skin. "You ever wanted snakeskin boots?"

Sam had no choice but to follow Dean into the motel to prepare their room for what Sam figured was going to be a very long night.

While Dean scrawled ancient symbols he copied from their father's notebook onto the wall, Sam sat on the bed, fighting the urge to cross his arms like a pouting four year old and tell Dean that he was stupid for doing this. Their motel room, once a stale-smelling room in need of a modern decorator, had been transformed into a mess of rock salt, Latin phrases and scattered guns. When Dean began humming one of his rock songs, Sam decided that the room looked like something out of a futuristic movie where the main heroes waited for the hand of evil to smite them to hell so that they could blow away the god effortlessly. Sam wished his life would really stop looking like an Armageddon flick gone bad with his older brother supplying the soundtrack.

Dean rose from his crouched position and stepped away from the wall to admire his work. He wasn't sure what kind of creature they were dealing with, but he had prepared everything according to his father's journal's pages. Although there were curses and protections against nearly twenty different supernatural monsters, he assumed that at least one of his hand-drawn charms would work. And if pencil outlines didn't work, then he would resort to one of the variant firearms lined up beneath their beds.

With the idea of a new creature to hunt, Dean forced himself to feel excited enough to block out the rising dread in the back of his mind. In spite of Sam's continual complains, Dean was undeterred in this sudden hunt against a monster that the scientists did not know and the locals hadn't talked about. He grinned to the wall, imagining the look on his father's face when he told him that Sam and he had brought down a brand new creature—together. At last, he would be able to write his own entry in the journal.

The brothers drank enough caffeine to remain awake through the night and tucked themselves into bed to lure the creature back into the room. Sam clutched a curved blade under his pillow, fighting to keep his breathing smooth and easy. Across the space between their beds, Dean's eyes glittered in the pale moonlight trickling through the curtains and focused themselves on Sam's. Although Sam could not see Dean's hands, he knew that they were tightly wrapped around a metallic firearm loaded with silver bullets Dean himself had expertly crafted.

As they lay in their separate beds, eyes concentrating on the other pair, each was reminded of all the nights they stayed awake similar to this. Except when they were children, they spoke of the hunts with their father and told stories about their school lives that, in their blatant ordinariness, had seemed surreal. Now, their lips were silent, but they told their stories once again, and both hoped that the story of the night would end with victory over the unknown.

Sam had lost track of time when their door creaked open to briefly illuminate the room before closing again. If he had been asleep, he never would have heard the soft noise, but as he was concentrating so heavily, the hushed squeak seemed enormous. He tightened his sweating fingers around the handle of his knife, and he saw Dean's forearm contract in a similar manner. Light steps padded across the carpet in a steady pattern that grew louder as they approached the twin beds. By the sounds alone, Sam assumed that there was more than one of whatever had entered their room. There was the swish of flesh rubbing against flesh, a silken foreign whisper, and he felt the blankets by his leg rustle slightly when the figure passed by.

Dean and Sam had the same thought when they both snapped upward to a standing position in their beds, lashing towards the dark shadows in the middle of their room. There was the explosion of gunfire, and suddenly, an overpowering hiss like that of a massive snake. As had been planned, Sam scuttled to the doorway and flipped on the light switch, back pressed to the wall and knife held out in front of him. When the room was illuminated, he felt his stomach drop and mouth go dry. Until Dean bellowed at him and blasted him back to reality, Sam's knife wavered at the sight of what stood in their presence.

They appeared to be lizards, if lizards were to stand on their hind legs and had a height of men. One of the monsters was scaled in luminescent black, while the other wore a muddy green coloring. Both of them, however, had thick back legs, each foot featuring multiple massive claws at the end. They had long arms with four fingers and an opposable thumb, as well as an elongated, sinewy tail that had its own daggered spikes digging into the carpet. Their yellow eyes were pinched in anger, and while two large fangs dipped over the bottom jaw, when they opened their mouths, Sam saw endless rows of white teeth coated in saliva and blood dried brown on their upper lips.

"Sam!" Dean shouted, shooting again, but the creatures darted out of the way, faster than something so large should have been able to move in such a small room. "Sam! Li'l bit of help here!"

Snapping out of his paralyzing fear, Sam dashed back to his bed, knife in one hand and grabbing a flamethrower in the other fist. As soon as he had picked up the new weapon, the green monster turned its eyes on Sam and swatted him across the room with its tail, where he crashed into the wall and cracked the dilapidating drywall, landing with a groan on the gasp and the wind knocked out of him. With Sam temporarily disabled, the lizards turned their attention back to Dean.

In a motion quicker than Dean was able to follow, the black creature knocked the guns out of his hands. The green one latched a hooked hand around his throat and dragged him from his standing position on the bed to the floor, where his knees buckled underneath him when he met the creature's eyes. There was a child screaming again, and he could smell burning flesh while he gasped for air. Dean gave a choked cry of pain, fingers fumbling to pry the suffocating grip away from his neck and mouth gaping in a struggle to breathe. As Dean sputtered and thrashed, blood springing from where the lizard's nails punctured the back of his neck, the creatures gave a silent look of communication between the two of them. They began to drag Dean, who was still writhing on his knees, across the floor to the doorway.

However, Sam was on his feet again and rushing towards them, rapidly firing and screaming obscenities. "No! Stop! No!" In one smooth gesture, the black lizard turned and faced Sam. It gave a malicious roar unlike anything he had ever heard before, and with the back of its hand, it hit Sam so hard in the head, he heard a sharp crack fire through his brain. All thought was blasted from his mind when his skull snapped loosely on his neck. In a heap of twisted limbs, he tumbled to the ground, and his eyes rolled back in their sockets while thin threads of blood hurried from his nostrils and over his warm lips.

Seeing his younger brother, Dean gave one final, valiant twist and managed to get enough air to scream, "_Sam_!" Something hot fell across his cheek, and he did not know if it was a fresh tear or a droplet of blood that caressed his skin when he cried out again. As if answering the call he gave to his sibling, the green creature gave a violent squeeze of its clawed talon. With a strangled whisper that resembled his brother's name, Dean slipped under the blackness.


	6. The Hands

_Six_

A strong pair of hands was on his shoulders, helping him to a seated position, and a male voice was talking to him in reassuring words he could not understand in his confusion. Sam, his vision all hazy blurs of swirling colors and twinkling black spots, reached out to grab the figure in front of him. "Dean?" he whispered, voice cracking. "Please." A sharp pain flashed across his cheek when he moved his mouth and split a coated wound open. "Dean."

"I'm sorry, son, I'm not Dean. Can you see me at all?"

Sam licked his lips and tasted his own blood dried to a salty crust on them before he answered. Slowly, the world stopped spinning and came back into focus as the colored shapes grew edges. In front of him, an officer crouched on his haunches, both of his hands holding Sam upright. The man wore a navy blue uniform that seemed to meld with his dark skin, and when Sam made eye contact, the man smiled reassuringly. "I'm here to help you," the man continued in his deep voice. "It's going to be okay."

"Where's Dean? Where is he?"

"There wasn't anybody else here when we arrived. Can you stand up? Let's get you off the floor."

Faintly, Sam nodded and tried to push himself up. His knees wobbled, and he pitched forward, causing both the officer and a woman dressed in a different uniform to help him to the bed, where he sat down on the still crumpled sheets. He looked around the room to see a handful of officers taking notes and questioning the motel owner. The owner appeared paler than the first night Dean had awoken him, and he kept raising his wavering hand to his lips in agitation. There was blood splattered on the floor and the bed sheets were torn from Dean's bed, and even though the weapons were out of sight under the beds, Sam knew it wouldn't be long before those, too, were discovered. Next to him, the officer who he had mistakenly thought was Dean, kept a firm hand on his shoulder that felt comforting in its constant presence, and on Sam's other side, the female paramedic was talking in a rush of medical procedures Sam suddenly didn't understand.

"Can you give me your name?" the male officer asked.

Sam shook his head slowly, feeling sick with the motion. His stomach lurched unnaturally, and he reached for the mattress to steady himself in a grasp hard enough to feel the coiled bedsprings. "Sam. My name's Sam."

"Sam, my name's Robert, okay? You can call me that. I just need to ask you what happened last night, if you're up to it. Do you need to lie down or go to a hospital right now?"

"No, no, I'm…fine."

"Sam, the lady next to you is Michelle. She's just going to be taking your blood pressure and temperature and other things like that while we talk. She's not going to hurt you. If anything does hurt, let her know. If there's something you want to tell either one of us, let us know. We're just here to help you, okay?"

"Okay," Sam replied, but his voice sounded weak and hollow. Even though he was looking at the ground between his feet, all he could see was Dean writhing with a reptilian fist squeezing his neck tighter. The acidic taste of bile rolled over his tongue, and he forced himself not to vomit with the fresh wave of nausea.

Michelle gave a close-lipped smile when he glanced over at her. "Remember, if anything hurts, let me know right away." She pulled a blood pressure cuff out of her black bag and the sound of its Velcro ripping roared like the monsters of the night.

"You called me 'Dean' when you woke up," Robert said. "Who's Dean?"

"He's my brother."

"Older or younger brother?"

"Older. By four years." Sam stopped himself before he could add, _And he saved me from a fire when he was only a child at four, and I couldn't save him now when I'm a perfectly capable adult of twenty-two years._

"Was Dean staying with you?"

"Yeah. That's his bed over there."

"How long have you guys been here?"

Sam winced as a sharp burst of pain shot through his head. He felt Michelle rubbing his back sympathetically, and the warmth her hands felt surreal in their comfort. This must have been how his mother patted his back when he was an infant on her shoulder. "Um, two, maybe three days? I think? We just needed a place to stay for a bit."

"What brought the both of you to this city?"

"We were passing through on our way to California," Sam lied, knowing that if the officers asked about their destination in California, he was familiar enough with the area to lie his way through their questions. "We've got friends over there we were going to see, and we needed some time off, though. The car, it was, it was having problems so we stopped for a bit."

"Do you know where Dean is now?"

"No, he's…gone," Sam whispered. He hated himself for losing consciousness, not knowing if they had taken Dean alive or had killed him in a bloody mess. Every time he closed his eyes, white lights flashed behind his lids, and he was convinced that his stomach was preparing to climb out of his throat and turn his body inside out.

"Sam, what happened last night?"

"Dean and I…we…went out to the bar here, played some pool, and then came back late."

"Did you or Dean have anything alcoholic to drink?" Robert asked, lifting his eyes from the notepad he scribbled on. His thumb formed a wrinkled patch of perspiration on the paper when he moved it slightly.

"I had maybe, three quarters of a glass of beer. Dean had about three or four, maybe. But, neither of us was drunk at all."

"So, what happened after you came back to the motel?"

"Well, it was late. After midnight, I think, but these two…guys, they broke into our room and attacked us."

"Do you know who these men were?"

"No…I don't know. Dean won money at the bar last night in a game of pool, maybe they were after him for that," Sam lied. He just needed to get the officers out of the room as soon as possible and find Dean on his own. If he started spouting stories of giant lizards and the loads of artillery under their beds, he was either going to prison or the psychiatric ward instead of a comfortable doctor's check-up for his wounds.

"Did they take Dean?"

"Yeah, I was trying to fight them off, and one of them hit me. I, uh, I was knocked unconscious. The last I saw was them dragging Dean out the door."

"The pictures on the wall? Were those here when you came to the room?"

"Um, no…I think…they're, um, gang symbols? I've never seen them before."

"Did these men have guns, Sam? The owner here reports hearing gunshots."

"Yeah, I think so. I just…everything's so fuzzy," Sam lied again. "And it was dark out."

"Did they shoot you or your brother?"

"They didn't shoot me, they might have shot Dean though. He screamed like they did." It would be the only way to explain why Dean's blood was splattered on his sheets without going into detail about how the lizard's nails had cut open his skin. Sam tried not to think about the real reasons Dean had cried out so badly, and if those nails had torn more than marks on his neck.

Robert nodded and scribbled something onto his yellow pad crisscrossed by his fine handwriting. "The people in the room next to you said they heard screams like that."

Michelle rested her hand on Sam's shoulder and said, "I think you might have suffered a concussion if you're this confused, Sam. I want you to come down to the hospital for some testing, but I can't force you to do so."

"Can I gather my things from the room?" Sam asked, glancing from Michelle to Robert. "These are the only things I have with me right now, and I need them…my clothes and stuff. I know it's a crime scene, but I—"

Robert hesitated before answering, like he was going to advise Sam not to touch anything as per his police protocol, but he nodded slowly. "Yeah, grab your things. I probably shouldn't let you, 'cause this _is_ a crime scene, but if there's anything we want to look at, I'm going to ask you to let us have the full authority to do so."

Sam nodded. "Right."

Robert rose to his feet, followed by Michelle, who patted Sam on the shoulder with a smile. "Do you need a ride to the hospital?" she asked. "I don't want you driving in your condition."

Sam shook his head, thick locks of hair tumbling into his bleary eyes. "No thanks, I've got to make some phone calls first and get my things."

"Sam," Robert began, "would you happen to have a picture of Dean that we could show to people around town to see if they have any information on what happened to your brother?"

"Are you going to find him?"

"We're going to do all that we can, yes." And before Sam could speak, Robert continued, "And I know you're worried about your brother, but I need you to stay here at the motel. The owner's already offered to get you a different room so we can examine this one."

Sam pulled out his wallet and found a crumpled photo of Dean that he thought he had thrown away years ago. "It's old," Sam explained, "but he still looks like that…just…older." He tried not to think about the possibility that Dean might not have been in one piece, possibly disemboweled for the lizards' meal of human flesh. Suddenly, Sam didn't know which idea was more sickening, finding Dean dead or never finding him at all.

"Do you know the date on this photo?"

Sam shrugged, feeling an abrupt flame of agony shoot through his muscles with the new movement. "Four, five years ago? Dean never liked to have his picture taken, so it's pretty much the only one I have."

"Do you mind if we keep it and make some copies? I'll get it back to you as soon as I can," Robert said.

"Yeah, go ahead, that's fine. Just, find him, please, that's all."

"I'll do my best, I promise." When he saw that Sam still hadn't moved from his sitting position, Robert looked down at the younger man. "You okay?"

"I just…Can I have a minute by myself?"

"Sure. I'll get them all out of here." In hushed commands, Robert led the other officers and gawkers out of the room and closed the door so that Sam was alone once again.

Quickly, Sam gathered his clothing and Dean's into their bags, shoving the guns and weapons around the bulky fabrics. Although it would take too much time to erase the symbols and sweep the rock salt from the carpeting, he grabbed what he could and what he would need. He tried to ignore the stinging sears of pain that burst through his muscles with each motion and remained concentrated on everything that stood before him. Instead of exiting through the front door where all the worried officials would be watching him leave with hands full of monstrous duffel bags, he slipped through the side window and hurried out to the Impala, thankful that Dean hadn't slept with the keys in his pocket that night. Sam threw their belongings into the Impala, crawled back through the window and then walked out the front door of the motel room casually.

Robert continued with only a few more questions, and the medical staff urged him to go to the hospital as soon as possible. Sam, however, assured them that he would be fine and would just stay at the motel while they searched for Dean. It took several times of him promising not to leave the room before they finally drove off into the distance.

Sam walked back to the Impala and hunched over the trunk, banging his clenched fists until they were as sore as the rest of his body. He had failed Dean, had failed his older brother who, if the situations had been reversed, would have already saved him from danger. Fuming, Sam kicked the wheels of the car, and then slumped to the graveled ground, fingers tearing at his hair and mouth opening in a scream to the sky. After his nausea passed, and he was able to stand without shaking again, he circled the car with his mind buzzing in furious thought. On his third time around the car, the late morning sun glinted off the vehicle's headlight and caught him directly in the eye. He whipped his head away from the light instinctively to raise his eyes to the desert.

In the distance, he saw rooted streaks in the sand as if something heavy had been dragged across it. Something heavy like an unconscious person. The trail was far enough away from the motel that the police would not immediately see it, so Sam, disregarding his own health, grabbed a glittering pistol and biting knife from the car's trunk and began to head towards the lines.

By the time he reached the beginning of the trail, he had already been walking for long enough to make him even dizzier than he already had been. So, he knelt down to examine the streaks further and saw that the streaks were about the same size as his heels. Immediately, he thought it very possible that the lines were made by an unconscious person being pulled backwards with their feet scraping the sand. Lifting his head, Sam gazed into the distance, trying to discern where the trail ceased, but even as he pinched his eyes against the searing sunlight, he saw no end.

The part of his mind that belonged to dusty college halls of rational thinking and overpriced textbooks of discipline told him to return to the car, gather his weapons, perhaps even find help, because he was in no condition to continue. Going out there on by himself could result in his demise.

But the other part of his mind, the one that his father created and Dean shaped, the one of stealing from the devil and breaking into Hell, swatted away his formal thinking and offered him a hand to pull him to his feet.

Normally, he would have told himself that "it was now or never," but this time, things were different. There was now, but not never.

Only now.

His legs were numb, shaking with exhaustion, and his saliva burned against his parched throat with every hitched swallowed when he saw the dark shape on the ground. Even though he could scarcely breathe and his shirt was soaked with perspiration, a rush of panic and excitement soared through his sinking body, and he quickened his pace as much as possible.

By the time he realized the shape was a human body on the ground, Sam was already in a run, sprinting over the sand in long, hurdling strides and ignoring every throbbing pain in his own body. He threw himself to his knees, skidding in the sand and hands grabbling at the clothes of the person to turn the body over to face him.

A scream, born of horror's essence rose to an acidic bite in the back of his throat when the damaged face was revealed to be his brother.

Dean's shirt was slashed to shreds that were crisp in dried blood, and the area of his chest that had been wounded the previous night was exposed to the blistering sun. Yet, those minuscule scars were gone, as that same area of Dean's flesh was flayed over his ribs where twisted mats of skin were pinched in sticky blood. Massive puncture wounds were clotted with black dried blood in a half-circle similar to a large bite mark of an upper jaw. On various places on his arms and sides, his skin was covered in numerous deep abrasions as if the flesh had been torn from his body. Dean's hands and arms were splattered in blood, and across one side of his face, a crimson handprint, thin and fierce, slapped his cheek to brand him.

"Dean? No, no, no, Dean, Dean, I'm here, okay?" Sam babbled. His words poured out in a mad rush of foreign syllables on his dry tongue. Frantically, he pressed his fluttering hands to Dean's neck to search for a pulse. He leaned his cheek next to Dean's mouth, while his fingers danced for what seemed like hours on blood-caked skin to search for the main artery. Underneath his quaking fingertips, a light, whispering pulse, and against his sore cheek, a thin hiss of air, both proved that Dean Winchester, though surrounded by his own dried blood on the sand beneath them, was still alive.

Yet.

"Okay, Dean, I'm right here. It's going to be okay, all right? It's going to be okay." Sam himself, physically, was in no position to carry his brother, but he could not let Dean die out in the desert. He looped one arm under the crook of Dean's knees, and the other beneath Dean's arms. When he stood, lifting Dean and pulling him against his chest, Dean gave a breathy sigh and underneath blackened lids, his eyes shuddered.

Sam looked to the sky as if to pray for the strength for both of them to survive. He pressed his forehead against Dean's, whispering apologies and pleading hopes.

And he began his long walk back.


	7. The Story

_Seven_

Other than a few unintelligent murmurs, Dean remained silent until Sam reached the motel parking lot. Wheezing through cracked and stinging lips, Sam moved in slow, plodding steps, concentrating only on moving one foot in front of the other, lest he too, faint with Dean in his arms. When Sam passed from the sandy desert plain to the gravel-speckled motel lot, his back muscles were curling inward, causing him to hunch forward over his brother's prone body. His shirt was clinging to his wet body, and his muscles trembled with fatigue, but he refused to release Dean until they were safe.

Sam staggered up to his motel room, and the motel owner, who had been sweeping sand off the porches, looked up in horror, mouth gaping open. He immediately dropped his broom with a sharp clatter on the wooden planks and hurried over, his gnarled hand flipping through the assortment of keys he pulled from his pocket. If the blood pounding through Sam's head had not been so loud, he would have heard the short prayer the man uttered, and then his words of, "Not again."

Instead, Sam said nothing while the older man unlocked the room door to allow him to enter and lay Dean on one of the beds. Sam went back to the Impala, parked outside the building, and produced one of their duffel bags holding a first aid kit. He moved past the motel owner, who stood silent witness in the doorway and watched as Sam began to clean the dried blood off Dean's skin. With every smear of blood that was removed, a new bruise emerged that only increased Sam's rising worry and fright. There was a dark blush following the line of Dean's cheekbone, one of his eyes was swollen shut in a macabre tinge of purple and black, and an assortment of other bruises were dotted across his body.

It was vital, too, that the holes in Dean's chest were cleaned and disinfected as soon as possible before they became infected. Sam managed to splash an antibacterial liquid onto a thick wad of gauze and wipe it on the weeping wounds, but when he went to get the crude needle and thread, his hands shook so badly that he was unable to put the thread through the eye of the needle.

"Let me do that."

Sam looked behind him to see the motel owner, a short, stocky man with neatly clipped gray hair shuffling forward on stiff joints. He handed Sam a perspiring bottle of water and sat down on the other side of Dean's body, across from Sam. "You just relax and drink that. Don't pass out on me, all right? I can handle him, but two of you gone? I'm no miracle worker."

"I can—" Sam began in protest.

"You're barely there yourself," the man argued, making a motion to Sam's quaking body. "I don't think your brother would want you sticking needles in his chest when you're shakin' worse than grass in the wind. He's lost enough blood. Won't do 'im any good to puncture an artery, huh?" Before Sam could continue with objections, the owner took the needle and thread from him, wiped at Dean's oozing sores with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and began to stitch the flayed skin together. The side of Dean's face that was not gruesomely bruised twitched, only a light ripple of movement beneath his skin, but he remained silent.

"How did you…" Sam began, but his question died on his lips. Although he remained positioned next to Dean to clearly see what the motel owner was doing, he drank the cold water greedily, unable to fight off his primal need of thirst, allowing the liquid to dribble over his parched lips and drip off the end of his chin. He wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand, prepared to repeat his words, when his answer came before he could speak again.

"Fought in two wars. I've done enough quick first aid in my time. Besides," the motel owner continued, as he dipped the needle beneath the jagged skin again, "this one's a bit personal for me."

"What do you mean?"

The man looked up at him from underneath hooded and heavy eyes, and the needle froze in the air above Dean's gently rising chest, pointing with a silver tipped omen of the past. After a moment, the needle looped down again, and the man said, "I know what did this to your brother."

Sam squeezed Dean's shoulder and waited cautiously.

"I don't know the name for them, no, I don't, but I know that they're a nasty bunch. Reptiles, big ones at that. And they came for your brother in the middle of the night, and that story you were tellin' the police about robbers or whatever? I know it's as much hogwash as you do. Am I correct?"

When Sam nodded in reply, he realized that his lips were frozen and tongue too thick to speak.

"That's what I thought. Now, I'm goin' to finish stitching up your brother here if you want to go into the bathroom and get me some more washcloths, you can get the rest of that blood off 'im before it dries. After he's cleaned up and restin', what do you say that the two of us have a talk?"

"I won't leave. We'll have to talk here. I'm not going to leave him."

The motel owner nodded in response, biting his peeling lower lip before he answered, "All right. I can work with that." He rose to his feet and moved towards the doorway. "I'll be back in just a moment."

Though hesitant to leave Dean's side even for a moment, Sam got the washcloths and ran them under warm water before bringing them out to Dean and wiping away the remainder of the blood. Although Dean's wounds were disinfected with rubbing alcohol and stitched together to form a crude pattern of twisted black thread against his smooth skin, Sam still fretted. He cut off Dean's bloody shirt and threw it away, before covering his older brother in a thin motel sheet. Gently, he propped Dean against an array of blue-flowered dotted pillows. Sam sat at the foot of Dean's mattress, and the motel owner positioned himself across from him on the other bed that Sam would later claim as his for the evening.

During the time that Sam was finishing Dean's care, the owner had left and returned with a bottle of tequila and two plastic cups. "Don't know if you're a drinkin' man, but after seeing this all again, I could use some. You want a cup?"

Sam nodded weakly and accepted the drink, trying to remember the last time he had used alcohol to ease away his pain. Yet, when he was handed the half full cup, he drank the contents in one carelessly smooth motion in defiance of his overwhelming emotions that gnawed on his nerves and brain. He twisted his face when the cool liquid turned hot down the back of his throat.

The motel owner pursed his cracking lips and crinkled his tanned forehead in worry before he spoke. "Let me make something clear: Your brother isn't the first one they've gotten. He's just the first one that's _survived_. You have to remember that. No one else has ever lived."

"What do you mean?"

"I've been 'ere all my life." The old man looked down into the bottom of his cup, searching for the strength to continue in the warm alcohol. "And these sort of…_things_…they come and they go. Nobody really talks 'bout it, though, 'cause nobody wants to admit to it. You see? If they don't talk about it, it don't really make it real for them. But, you know, they all know what it is. This is the first time, though, that this has happened in over a decade. I really thought it was over, but I guess I was mistaken.

"There have, over the years, been children found in the desert with wounds exactly like your brother's. The same, deep puncture wounds on the same side of the chest and the tearin' around the heart, as if the creatures that did this to them were tryin' to get to that organ itself. But, they've all been dead by the time they were found. Your brother, like I said, is the only one I've ever seen alive."

"How long has this been going on?"

He shrugged, a careless gesture resulting from the desensitization that years of pain brought. "It's always been there. I can't think of when it _started_, really. I get down on my knees and pray to God every morning. Do I know when I started doin' _that_? No sir, and I don't know how long God's been there listenin' to me. Just like with these things. They've always been there. Like the desert. Just watchin'."

"How do I stop them? There must be a way to stop them."

The owner gave a shifting glance through his eyes, surrounded by wrinkles and worry. "You must be more than one kind of crazy, because you don't _stop_ them. You just scare them off long enough to survive to the next day."

When Sam opened his mouth to speak again, the other man stopped him. "Let me tell you a story, 'kay? 'Bout twenty, twenty-five years ago, I was married to a wonderful woman. She had a daughter from 'nother marriage, and I loved them both so much. The daughter could 'ave been mine, I loved 'er so much. We lived not too far from here, all three of us together.

"One night, late, there's screaming comin' from our daughter's room. We, my wife and me, get there in time to see the girl gettin' carried out the window by something we can't see. By the time we get to the window, she's gone and whatever the hell took 'er's gone as well.

"So, we send the p'lice out after her. We've got them lookin' for…" The old man waved his callused hand in a bored fashion. "Days? Weeks? I don't remember. Long time, though. Police say we can keep searching, but it was pretty hopeless for ev'rybody. My wife didn't talk to me much, just looked out the window lot, talkin' to 'er daughter that wasn't there anymore. Now, I loved that little girl, and I searched every inch of the desert for 'er that I could get to, but I didn't know what else to do.

"Well, long after the girl disappeared, something attacks my wife in the middle of the night just like your brother was 'ttacked. My wife is screaming from our bedroom—I was asleep on the couch, fell 'sleep with the newspaper in my lap. I grab my shotgun and run into the bedroom. Shot at whatever the 'ell it was and scared it off. My wife had some scratches, bleedin' pretty bad, but not death like or nothin'.

"The next day—I'll never forget this as long as I live—I went out for my usual walk in the desert and found the girl, our daughter in the sand. Her chest was ripped open like your brother's here, all a mess. Bitten up by those monsters like your brother, but she didn't have any pulse or nothin'. She was dead."

The motel owner sighed, wiping a hand across his bristled face, and he glanced from Dean's damaged body to the bottle of tequila he had placed on the floor. Yet, Sam could see in his eyes that he was standing over his step-daughter's dead body again even if he was sitting in a room twenty years past. In a shaking voice, the old man continued, "So I carried 'er back. Laid 'er on the bed and wrapped 'er up all nice. But, I had to break the news to my wife." He paused, and Sam didn't ask him to clarify what reaction his wife must have had to the news of her only child's death. "She committed suicide two days after the official funeral was held. Slit 'er wrists in the bathtub and wrote a note that said, 'Baby, I'm sorry' to 'er daughter and another to me that asked to be buried with 'er girl."

An awkward silence fell over the room, and Sam looked into his cup where a bead of the tequila curled around the bottom edge. He suddenly felt guilty for Dean's life where so many others had fallen. "I'm sorry," he finally said. "I know what it's like to lose somebody you care about."

The motel owner nodded in a jerky motion, as if he was agreeing with Sam's response instead of accepting his offer of sympathy.

"I have to stop them, though," Sam continued. "I won't let anymore people be killed like this. It's not right. I can't believe people have let it go on."

"Boy, I don't know much, but I know one thing: Let it _go_. Let us be. You can stay long as you like, but leave and don't look back. It's not any different than dealin' with half the shit other people do. We just pray for it not to happen, and when it does, we pray and cry a little bit harder. That's all."

"But, you're talking about something that _hunts_ humans—"

"I _know_ what we're talking about. I know that these monsters are of superior intelligence than any other animal. I know, I know. We're not people to them…we're…"

"Prey."

"Yes."

When another long pause fell over the room, the old man rose to his feet, joints popping in his knees when he stood, and he moved towards the opened door leading out to the desert. His form cast a long shadow across the room, and the top of his shadowed head touched Sam's feet. The man had said all that he needed to, had provided all the warnings, and he could speak no longer without the burning pain unfurling in his heart.

Sam looked down at his hands, dry, callused fingers interlocked and dangling loosely between his knees, before he lifted his head and spoke. "Do you think he'll live?"

Dean had not moved on the bed, and even though there was a shallow lift of his chest to prove that he breathed at all, his skin was still ghastly pale and lips tinged blue. With the black stitching running across his torso and white bandages dotting his skin, he resembled a corpse more than a living body.

Sam wondered if he would live through the night.

At the doorway, the motel owner turned upon hearing Sam's question and looked over his shoulder, with thick, gray eyebrows raised in questioning. "What was that?" he asked.

"Do you think he'll live?" Sam repeated, attempting to control the crack of fear for his brother's death out of his voice.

"Do you want him to?"

Sam looked confused that the man would be asking such a question, and he shook his head, batting away hot tears in the corners of his eyes. Dean's life wavered so dangerously intimate with death. "Of course. More than anything."

"Then he will."


	8. The Chosen

_Eight_

Following the attack, Sam appointed himself as the sole caretaker of Dean in a vain attempt to assuage the guilt that rose from not saving Dean during the initial assault. Sam dribbled water into Dean's mouth and spooned him soft foods that his older brother somehow swallowed despite his outward state of being dead to the world. In careful tenderness, he changed Dean's bandages when they grew crusted with blood from the weeping sores, and he used a sponge soaked in disinfectant to wipe at the wounds.

Sam refused to sleep out of fear that Dean would awake in the darkness, scared and disorientated, so Sam dozed in fitful little moments when he nodded off accidentally while cleaning Dean's bandages or reading a newspaper at the table. Showering, getting food from a restaurant rather than the quickie-mart next door, researching at the library, and anything that involved leaving the motel room for extended periods of time were all out of the question. There were simply too many risks involved in Sam's absence from Dean's side. Dean could wake up, suffering from an unimaginable brain trauma, perhaps, which could result in anything from mild confusion to outright amnesia. Perhaps even a permanent vegetative condition. The reptiles could return for Dean, if they had planned on killing him the first time and had thus failed in their fatal task.

At the very worst of all the possibilities, Dean could die.

This was the idea that Sam fretted over, transforming him into a pacing insomniac at all hours of the day. He chewed on his nails until their cuticles were pink and wrinkled, and every time Dean moved or breathed differently, Sam would rush to his bedside, waiting for a conscious response. Empty coffee cups began to pile up on the table as Sam forced the bitter caffeine down his throat even though his hands jittered and his words blurred together when he spoke too fast. He continued to talk to Dean in a futile hope that Dean would open his eyes and tell him to shut his mouth, because that was what Dean always did when Sam talked too much.

When Dean didn't open his eyes or tell Sam to be quiet, Sam began to worry that his older brother truly was gone from his grasp.

It was during the afternoon of the second day that Dean had been unconscious, and Sam was reapplying a folded square of cotton gauze to cover one of Dean's puncture wounds when a familiar hand reached up and took him by the wrist. The grasp was cold and frail, and the fingers against his wrist were light and dry, but as weak as the touch may have been, the voice blasted Sam to his core with its strength. "Sammy?"

The roll of adhesive tape fell from his fingers, nearly hitting Dean in the head, but landing safely on the bed sheets, where it rolled with a defeated bounce onto the floor. Immediately, Sam grabbed Dean's hands in his own, trying to control his nervous shaking. Below him, Dean's swollen, red eyes were pinched open to reveal filmy slivers of green, and he smacked his dried lips together slowly as he attempted to move his sore body.

Sam had the exact words planned out for Dean to hear when he awoke, but such formal sentences scattered when Dean's eyes met his. Dean's voice, a voice that Sam was afraid he would never hear again, uttered that despised nickname and removed the rest of Sam's rational thinking. Sam sputtered uselessly before he choked out, "Dammit, Dean."

"Sam? What…" Dean's voice faded to a hoarse rasp, and he swallowed dryly, causing Sam to scramble to the nightstand and offer him a cup of water where a plastic straw bobbed in the cool liquid. Dean squinted dubiously at the straw, but nevertheless accepted it and drank slowly, before pulling his lips away in a sign that he was finished. When Sam had set the cup back on the nightstand, pressing himself into a seated position by Dean's hip, Dean opened his eyes slightly wider, still not moving his body. One of his eyes was unable to fully open and squinted at Sam through bloated black rings. "What the 'ell happened?" His speech was slurred, as if he had simply drank one too many shots at the local bar instead of having the majority of his chest torn away by demonic creatures.

"What do you remember?"

"I—" Dean winced and paused before making an effort to speak again while Sam gazed on with eager eyes. "Those things. They came into our room, and you…I thought you…"

Sam smiled through the hot tears blurring his vision. "Yeah, well," he joked and his voice cracked, causing him to try to fight for bravado he could not feel, "I'm tougher than I look, what can I say?"

"There was…and this…" Dean's pitch wavered, and he lifted one of his limp hands flimsily to his chest, an array of bandages and gauze, twisted stitching and mangled flesh. Groggily, his bruised fingers caressed the thick cotton patches taped over his sore muscles. "They…did this?"

"Yeah," Sam replied in a hoarse whisper. "You've been out for about two days. I found you in the desert like this. They got you good."

"They left me in the desert?"

"I don't know. I just, that's where I found you. You'd been out there for awhile, and I…" Sam looked away to where the late afternoon sun nibbled on the edge of the bed and warmed his skin. "I carried you back here."

"You carried me?" Dean's broken face, a collage of bruises and dried sores, tried to convey shock, but the muscles were too hurt to move properly just yet. The most he could manage was a low raise of one of his less damaged eyebrows.

"Yeah, it happened. Get over yourself. I wasn't going to leave you out there like a piece of steak."

Dean nodded slowly and a thick silence fell over the room. Sam wanted to ask Dean what had happened, but he was afraid that if he pushed too hard, Dean would break. Sam didn't know if he could put his broken brother together again.

After a pause, Dean began to struggle to push himself to a seated position. Instantly, Sam scrambled for his shoulders to help him move, while issuing warnings of his own. "Dean, in your condition—"

"Sam, in my condition, I've got to piss."

"Let me help you…"

"Help me? What? Don't tell me they ate _that_ part of my body? Dammit…"

"What?" Sam responded incredulously. "No, no, Dean, that's just…You really think they'd want that?"

Dean forced a feeble, caustic laugh and clambered to his feet. Even though Sam hovered about him protectively, Dean eventually went into the bathroom by himself and locked the door despite Sam's concerned protests.

Stiff-legged and clutching his abdomen, Dean hobbled to the toilet where he pulled his pants down like a woman and sat on the cold seat, too weak to stand long enough to urinate. His head swayed and swirled causing him to clutch it in his hands, praying that he wouldn't be forced to turn around and vomit as nothing remained in his stomach to expel.

After he was finished, he pulled his pants back up and eased down on the cool tiled floor with his back resting against the bathtub. He stretched his legs out in front of him and bent his head down until his chin touched his chest, breathing in shallow, painful gasps. Outside the door, he could hear Sam's anxious, clipped footsteps, and he smiled faintly at his younger brother's defensive ways.

Dean barely remembered what had happened to him since he was torn from his room by the creatures for which he had no name. The sensations were distant, dream-like in their fog, the noises muffled and echoed, and the images blurred and hazy. There had been frenzied screams, sounding similar to the crazed voodoo chanting of witch gatherings in the southern bayous. But this time, it was no human language he heard rolling through his head. No, it was a foreign tongue of a different species entirely.

They had ripped into his flesh, and he had felt their teeth every time they slipped amongst the fibers of his muscles. With lapping mouths, they fed off him as his blood dribbled off his body and onto waiting, purple tongues. When they dug their hooked black nails into him, they had whispered their alien words, and with every flash of pain that slithered through his body, he began to understand.

He had been chosen, for he was marked amidst the men with whom he walked the earth. He was chosen by them for ones who were greater than they. These were the words they hissed through fangs dripping of his blood. He was to be raised to power among humans, for he was chosen with such pristine care. These were the promises they slurred with their mouths full of his skin.

Somewhere, he had lost consciousness, slipping into blessed blackness. When he awoke, he was lying, naked, on the cool ground covered in a thin, sticky film of his own blood and liquids. His eyes, burning and bloody, opened to see a huge shadow rising over him, and in the distance, he could hear the frenzied wails crying for his sacrifice. The shape moved, swelled to twice its size, and lunged.

It had been then, trapped amongst those monsters, that he had finally screamed.

Suddenly, Sam burst into the bathroom, having picked the lock on the door, and he stood in the doorway for a brief moment of shock. "Dean?" When he saw Dean sprawled on the floor, not responding, he looped his long arms underneath his older brother's and helped him out of the room. "Dean, you okay? Talk to me."

He had been chosen. Because in some way, he was different from Sam in a way that made him special enough for them to drink his blood and rip to his heart. His attack had been no accident.

"Yeah, I'm all right."

Words of a liar.

"C'mon, lay down," Sam said, "you're never going to recover in the bathroom."

Several days later, Dean's bruises had faded to a light blue from their monstrous purple tinge, and he was able to walk around the room without having to sit down. With his brother looking better, Sam, having just returned from doing a load of laundry, decided they should go to the library to do research on the creatures.

"We have to see why it came after you," Sam said.

"Yeah, I guess," Dean answered, even though he already knew the answer. He rubbed his forehead and felt the rough lines of peeling scabs, then looked over at Sam, who was pulling a fresh shirt over his head. "Don't tell me you haven't already gone on your own to do research."

"I wasn't going to leave the room long enough."

"So you've just been going to get food and that's it?"

"Yeah. I mean, dude, I wasn't going to come back to find you passed out in the bathtub. You drowned or something because you fainted?"

"Nice," Dean shot back.

"I'm being serious. But, you're well enough now, and I think you can go out in public without scaring half the population."

"Yeah, you don't want anybody to think we're having a 'domestic dispute' huh?" Dean leered through lips that still wore tender bruises.

"Just go do whatever it is you have to do. Hurry up, though."

Dean laughed, then shook his head and went to use the bathroom, closing the door behind him. After he had finished shaving, he brushed his teeth until he was sure that he would not be able to taste blood on his tongue during the day. He had spit for the last time in the sink, toothbrush in one hand, when he casually looked down at the other hand that twisted on the water faucet to wash toothpaste suds down the drain.

His toothbrush fell to the ground in a horrified silence, where it clattered once in a sharp rap against the tiles and lay still.

On the back of his hand, small in size and slate blue in color, clustered patches of scales had formed on his rough skin. They were no larger than the pad of his thumb, but they stared back at him with glittering eyes of threat. Frantically, feeling his breath catch painfully in his throat, he scratched at the scales with his torn fingernails, willing them to flake off. Doing so, however, proved futile as it was like peeling his own skin off with his fingers.

From his front pocket, he produced a pocket knife that he flipped open to reveal a carefully cleaned and malicious blade. Taking a deep breath and biting his lower lip, he pressed the tip of the knife to the scales and began to methodically slice them out of his skin. After he was finished and the scales had been discarded in a wrapped bundle of toilet paper, he held his hand over the sink, allowing the cool water to slurp against the ceramic edges and catch his blood on its way down the drain.

"Dean?" There was a sharp rap of knuckles against the door. "What are you doing in there? Don't make me come in there. C'mon, let's get going," Sam's muffled voice called.

"I'll be out in a minute." With his good hand, he grabbed a thick clutch of toilet paper and pressed it to the back of his bleeding hand. When he had finally gotten the majority of the blood to ebb, he applied a new batch of band-aids to his self-mutilations and looked up at himself in the mirror.

A stranger, a chosen stranger, stared back.

Above all, he could not tell Sam. This would be something he would have to deal with on his own, as Sam had already dealt with his problems enough in the past few days. Besides, he did not know how he could look Sam in the eye and tell his younger brother that he was growing scales like the lizards who had not only almost killed him, but had also chosen him for a reason he did not yet understand.

No, he could not tell Sam.

He flushed the toilet, expelling the balls of bloody tissues down the gaping black underwater mouth and exited the bathroom nonchalantly. Sam stood up from the bed in one swift movement, eyes pinched in question and worry.

"Bad pancakes this morning," Dean said with a forced smile. Grabbing the car keys from the table, he walked to the door, trying to position his hand out of Sam's line of vision. However, he was not quick enough to do so, as Sam spoke from behind him when he reached for the door handle.

"Hey, what's up with your hand? I didn't know you had marks there. Are those new ones?"

Mentally, Dean cursed his brother's acute observation skills and shook his head. "Naw, just some of the scabs came off. Bled more than I thought. Don't worry 'bout it." He looked back over his shoulder at Sam, who had risen in his eyebrows in doubt, and he twirled the car keys around his index finger. They jangled in their tight spinning whirl. "You comin' or you just gonna stand there?"

"You sure they were old marks?"

"Sam, I'm sure. I'm fine, all right?" He smirked again, the smile he had used on hundreds of people throughout his years to convince them that his words were true, and he was to be trusted. Yet, he felt the lick of tongues on the back of his arms and knew that his words to Sam were the furthest from the truth they had ever been.


	9. The Statistics

_Nine_

The air conditioner in the library sputtered and groaned with metallic clanks approximately every ten minutes before it blasted out a puff of hot air amidst feeble attempts at cool air. Dean, from his reclined position in one of the reading chairs, cast low-lines glances in the direction of the appliance and decided it sounded like it needed new transmission fluid. After the first few times of the grating noises, he began to wonder if it weren't preparing to explode and kill them all. If, of all the places he had to die, it would be in a library, he planned to issue a complaint with the people in charge when he reached the other side.

He sighed when the cool air gradually returned to gently touch his skin, and he looked out the large windows where the sun was beginning to sink in the sky. Glancing at his watch, he gave a dull groan, learning that Sam had been gone for more than two hours, lost to the books and his fervent quest for research. In the time since they had separated upon entering the library, Dean had managed to pull a dusty children's book from the nearest shelf and flip through it lazily. A growing headache gnawed at the corners of his brain, and when he tried to focus on words, the pain only increased in intensity, so he resorted to looking at the colored pictures.

Across one of the pages, a small, green lizard wearing a goofy smile and cartoon eyes was shown eating a bug, while the caption read in big, friendly letters, "Today, Freddy eats flies. Freddy likes to eat flies. They taste good." Dean smiled wryly, just a slight curve at the corner of his lips, thinking that famed published authors had gotten something wrong at last. _No, _he thought,_ Freddy has chosen me and thinks that _I_ taste good._ _Flies are the least of Freddy's dinnertime orders_.

He averted his eyes from the book to lift one edge of the crimson blotted gauze on his hand. The skin there was blotched in crusted red patches where he had cut away the scales, and when he pressed his fingers against the sores, they were still swollen and painful. Quickly, he glanced around to make sure that no one was watching him, and he looked back down at his wounds. For a flash of an instant, there appeared to be blue dots on the edges of the dried blood, but when he turned his hand at a different angle, the colored marks disappeared. He shook his head, trying to convince himself that he was merely seeing things in the poor lighting because he had managed to permanently remove the scales from infecting his body.

Just as he had closed the child's book in his lap and rested his head against the back of the chair to doze while he waited, Sam's voice blasted through his fatigued mind. "Dean? What are you doing? You can't sleep in here."

Dean opened his eyes weakly, lifting his head to see Sam, who carried a pile of dog-eared books under one arm, glaring down at him. "Who says I can't? There's no 'No Sleeping, Please' signs posted."

"It's a _library_," Sam retorted huffily, as if Dean had committed an illegal action against the state. "You sleep, you look like some homeless bum."

"Like I don't already? Hell, I look like a homeless bum who's just been in a street fight."

The acknowledgement of his injuries seemed to hurt Sam, who looked away from Dean's face and toward the pile of books he had brought. He cleared his throat and sat down on the table next to Dean's feet. "I found nothing on the actual _things_," he said, refusing to admit openly that the "things" were massive lizards, which had nearly killed his brother. "But, I found out some interesting stuff about the city. Perhaps there's a connection."

"Perhaps."

"What about you? Find anything?" Sam asked.

"Flies taste good."

"What?" Sam's eyebrows shot up to hide beneath his bangs in surprise along with the pitch of his voice raising several levels. Had Dean not been so exhausted, he would have laughed at the comical shock on his brother's face. Instead, he lifted the old children's book from his lap and waved it idly in the air near Sam's face.

"Freddy likes to eat flies. Apparently, he doesn't like Dean flesh."

"That's not funny," Sam shot back angrily, snapping the book out of Dean's hand.

"Funny enough." Dean shrugged, then swung his legs off the table and leaned forward in his chair to bring himself closer to Sam who was glaring at him through the angry eyes of a four-year old prepared to throw a temper tantrum over his favorite toy. "So, what'd you get, Darwin? Tell me all 'bout our reptile friends, please."

"I told you, I didn't find anything on them, exactly. City statistics that I think are interesting considering…everything."

"Shoot."

"All right. There have been numerous child disappearances and deaths over the years. This one," he said, pulling a green bound book from the middle of his stack, "says something about this city having one of the highest percentages of child disappearances across America. In comparisons of cities of the same size, it, I think it's second or third—"

"To what? Other cities?"

"Yeah, but I don't know," Sam grumbled, slightly frustrated. "It didn't list the names of the other ones."

"Derry, obviously is number one."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"Stephen King? Derry, Maine?" Dean waved a hand dismissively. "And you think you're so well educated. If anybody knows things about the supernatural bullshit we hunt that man must have—"

"You _read_ Stephen King?"

"I've dabbled."

"Anyway," Sam continued in a distracted tone, "there's all the child disappearances. Occasionally, the kid will be found dead, but not always. The wounds are similar to what you had, and they're usually written off as mountain lion or something like that. I went online and did a search for the deaths in this city, filed it down to just children, and I can't really find any similarities between all of them." From one of the larger books, he pulled out a crisp white stack of paper that was smooth beneath his fingers. "Aside from their ages, they're all of different races, genders, backgrounds…Nothing in common."

"You searched any farther than the city?"

"Yeah."

"And?"

Sam looked up at Dean, then chewed on the corner of his lip quietly and averted his gaze to the floor.

"Sam? What about the other cities?"

Finally, Sam sighed heavily. "Yeah, yeah, I did. There's these types of deaths across the country, possibly further, but I didn't search outside America."

"How many we talkin'?"

"Lots."

"Lots? What happened to college boy statistics?" Dean mocked, but beneath his false audacity, he felt his insides slip over one another in a cruel warning that his questions were going to lead to undesired answers.

"Hundreds. _Hundreds_, Dean. I've got data from the sixties when they first started tracking this stuff, and there's hundreds."

"Then why aren't people standing up and taking notice?"

Sam shrugged. "Because they can write it off as something else? Up north, bear attack. On the coast, shark attack if it's near the water. Mountain lion, hell, even wolverines if you want to be honest. Okay, maybe some of the attacks _really _are other animals, but I don't think all of 'em are. They don't see the lizards like we did, Dean. They're not going to automatically know there's something like this that's killing people."

"People are morons sometimes."

"They're not morons. It's no different than anything else we do. They don't really believe Bloody Mary pops out the mirror at them or they can get possessed on an airplane…or, hell, what about the Wendigo? This is like that. What did they think it was? I don't remember now…Bear attack? They just don't…they don't see everything and so they try to put the easiest explanation on it that they can."

"So what? We gather the names of the families here and go and talk to 'em? If they don't know it's the lizards from Hell, they probably won't be of any help anyway," Dean responded. "This isn't like the Wendigo at all. This is across the goddamned country, Sam. And when did the Wendigo ever exclusively hunt certain people?"

"Yeah, well, you're right. There's got to be a reason why specific children are attacked and not. It's like they're chosen by these things."

_Oh Sam, if only you knew_. "You really think our scaly friends are that intelligent?"

"I wouldn't put anything past these guys right now," Sam answered. "All the attacks are on kids between the ages of four and thirteen. But like I said, there's different ethnicities, different locations—some urban and some rural—, different genders…just different everything. You're obviously an exception to the rule in that you first of all, survived the attack, and that you're, well, older."

Dean rose to his feet, stretched as much as he could without straining his sore muscles, and looked down at Sam, who was still sitting on the table. "Look, let's go and get something to eat. I'm starving. Then, if you really want, I guess we can go and talk to the parents whose children got nabbed. Maybe we'll see something that the official police boys didn't."

"Yeah, I guess," Sam responded, sounding a little bit disappointed as if he had wanted to stay in the library longer. Reluctantly, he followed Dean out the doors and into the quickly falling shadows of dusk.

They ate dinner at a small restaurant, and Dean poked his fries into their thick ketchup quietly. He drew bright red trails around the edges of his plate until Sam pointed out that Dean had already said that he was starving but hadn't eaten anything. Dean didn't respond that he suddenly wasn't hungry because the hamburger reminded him of the way his own muscles had been eaten and even the ketchup seemed to have taken on a greater gruesome meaning. Instead, he voiced complaints of nausea, sipped at the glass of water he ordered, and asked for the check.

When a girl at the table across from them winked suggestively at Dean, he barely managed a weak smile in return before pushing himself away from the table and walking out the door. Sam stopped chewing on his own fries and wondered how he could have been so blind to his sibling's problems.

Later that night, after both of the brothers had been sleeping easily, Dean abruptly awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of his name called from the darkness. For a moment, he refused to move and remained lying with his eyes opened. Then, he pushed himself to a seated position and finally, slid his legs out of bed and walked to the partially opened window.

Rolling in on the late night wind, his name slipped through the window and he knew that they were beckoning for him once again. He glanced over his shoulder at Sam, who was sleeping quietly with thick brown hair cascading down on his eyes in slumber. Still exhausted from his consecutive days of not resting, Sam had fallen into an impenetrable and extreme sleep, and Dean doubted that he could be easily roused.

Turning his attention back to the window, Dean lifted the pane until it was fully opened, and he was able to see across the desert. Except for the rolling wind and the summoning whispers, the world was silent and still, watched only by the scattered stars above. He had just closed the window to block out the call and began to walk back to his bed, when the voice came again, echoing through his mind_, You know he'll never understand, Dean. _

Sam stirred and rolled over onto his other side, long limbs draping off the bed in their size. In the pinched illumination of the night, one side of his face disappeared into the dark shadows of his pillow, while half of dark stubble and closed eye glowed in the pale lighting.

_We understand, Dean. Don't you see? We belong together. He is your brother by blood, but we are your brothers by choice. And that means so much more, oh yes, it does._

_I have hunted you_, he thought, somehow knowing that even though his words were not spoken aloud, they would be heard nonetheless. _I have hunted the likes of you and killed you effortlessly. What makes you think I won't do it now?_

_Because you know that we are different than mere monsters of the night. You looked into our eyes, did you not? And when you looked at us, did you recognize yourself? Who did you see in us, Dean?_

Dean remained silently, concentrating on keeping his breathing steady.

_Did you see your father in all his glory, covered in the blood of thousands he has killed? Did you see your mother while she was alive and loved you, but burned in a fire that has consumed your life to this day? Perhaps your brother even? Or was it your own eyes staring back at you?_

_I won't hurt Sam. _

_We are not here to hurt him. We are not here for him. We are here only for you. He does not see the world as you have._

_He must never know._

_No, there is no reason for him to know. Keep him there and lie to him as you will. We don't mind, Dean. We won't tell. It is your choice to tell him, but you won't tell either. You know the truth would destroy him. You are everything to him, and to discover that you are so different, he would never look at you the same way again._

Dean shook his head and did not reply. The voices came again.

_Dean, you know what it is we see in you. It is too late now to turn back to the life you once lived. Walk with us as you would walk with him._

Dean looked back to his own empty bed, white tousled sheets glowing in the light, and then back to his younger brother. Swallowing twice, he found that even on the second gasp, the large lump in his throat was still pinching his air and threatening to suffocate him. He placed his hand on the windowsill and met the stars' eyes.

The room spun in shades of midnight and Sam.

Hours later, Sam awoke to the taste of cotton in his mouth and the sound of the neighbors in the next room fighting. He groaned when he glanced at the clock to see that it was still early enough that he should have been sleeping, and he threw an arm across his eyes. Disgusted, he rolled onto his opposite side to face Dean's bed, and his slit eyes scanned the jumbled covers on Dean's bed. When he realized that Dean's bed was empty and the bathroom door was open, he sat up with a terrified jolt. Dean's pajamas were thrown in a heap on the floor, and his duffel bag was gaping open, spewing clothes across the bed.

Frantically, Sam leapt from his bed and ripped his own clothes from a bag before bolting for a weapon. As he flew out the door, his feet barely touching the floor, Sam couldn't stop the thought from entering his mind that perhaps, this time, Dean did not want to be found.


	10. The Chorus

_Ten_

There was a dotting of footprints across the sand outside the motel, blackened marks leading into the swelling horizon. Sam did not have to crouch to the ground and run his fingers along the edges of the tracks to feel the familiar curves or see the well-known treads of the boots to know to whom they belonged. He could recognize the prints as Dean's immediately. After all, Sam had followed in his older brother's steps all his life. This time was no different.

In his haste to leave, he had grabbed only a gun and a knife for weapons, but he had fortunately remembered to take along a flashlight and a bottle of water. The beam of the flashlight bounced spasmodically as he moved swiftly across the cool sand. After some time, he turned off the light, tucking into his back pocket, and he ran with Dean guiding him. Even in the darkness, Dean's footprints seem to glow, and Sam's gaze could not leave them. With the stars watching from above, diamond eyes in the clear black shroud of night, the world around Sam was silent and barren. There was the occasional mournful cry of an unfamiliar bird, and even during those moments, he was so focused on his ragged breathing that he barely heard the animal. Although he did not know where he was being led to, Sam continued on faithfully, his brotherly devotion propelling him into the night.

The tracks twisted down a sloping hill where the sand became coarser to crunch as gravel beneath Sam's feet. When he pulled the flashlight from his pocket and swept the beam along Dean's footprints, he saw a black entranceway in the side of a hill on the opposite side of the small valley he had entered. Suddenly, a chill passed through Sam, and he looked to the sky where a thin sliver of moon floated, and he wished that Dean was beside him, and they were hunting the monsters together instead of him hunting Dean alone. Nevertheless, he walked to the opening, hunched over so that his hands dangled near his feet and shuffled awkwardly through the small doorway.

After he had made it through the opening, Sam was pleased to learn that the entranceway opened up to a reasonable space where he could stand freely. Craning his neck to look for the ceiling and sweeping his flashlight along the rocky top, Sam estimated the height to be too far out of his reach to jump for, and the width of the tunnel was slightly more than his arm span. With the ground rippled rock below him, Dean's footprints were no longer impressed into the floor, but Sam had no doubts that his older brother had passed this way.

Sam kept his back pressed to the wall on his right side and moved carefully down the tunnel with the gun in one hand and flashlight in the other. Both instruments were positioned in front of him, and careful jerks of his wrist flicked the beam of light where needed. His finger, wet with perspiration raised from his terror, pressed tightly near the trigger, and he struggled to keep his breathing quiet in the still environment. The solitary sound was that of steadily dripping water from nearby.

As he continued down the tunnel, he suddenly emerged into a small room that was not much larger than his first dorm room at college had been. On the opposite side of the space, an assortment of shadows bulged out from the wall, and he immediately aimed the shaking gun at them before he realized that they were not moving. Hesitantly, a primal fear climbing up within, he lifted the flashlight to the shadows.

Corpses, some more rotted than the others, were shoved against the wall in a crude pile of eaten dolls from the Devil's playtime. Bloated eyes stared up at Sam when he drew closer, and the mouths were flayed back into a choked screams of pain. A few of the bodies were gnawed to mangled flesh and pieces of grayed muscle were scattered on the ground around the bodies. Squirming white maggots buried themselves into rancid ear canals, their wet, wormy bodies glistening under the beam of light. When Sam saw the blonde hair of a young girl who was missing half of her face, reminiscent of the motel owner's step-daughter, his diaphragm contracted and tore at his stomach. Drunkenly, he turned and vomited into the corner, one hand wrapped around his convulsing abdomen and the other splayed onto the cool rock wall to hold himself upright.

This was to what Dean had voluntarily returned. This was for what Dean had left him. Suddenly, Sam did not know whether to hate or fear his older brother.

Sam wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, forcing his jagged breathing to a calm pace, and he took a sip of his water to wash away the acidic tang festering on his tongue. As he was doing so, a small lizard scurried with clicking nails across his shoe. With beaded yellow eyes, it began to clamber up the leg of his pants, and a thin purple tongue shot out at Sam as it climbed. Although it was nowhere near as large as the creatures that had attacked him in the middle of the night, he still knocked the little monster with the butt of his gun to send it flying into the darkness of the room.

His heart was a wild frenzied pounding in his ears, and his throat seemed to constrict uncontrollably, making breathing difficult. It took all of his control not to scream.

Trying not to linger, he moved out of the room into another tunnel that twisted off one side. As he walked with shaking legs, he realized that there were muffled sounds coming from the end he could not yet see, and he tensed in anticipation and fear. Tucking his arms to his chest, he pointed the gun towards the ceiling and tightened his hold near the trigger. Although he did not know what awaited him at the end of the tunnel, he knew that if he had to shoot, he must shoot to kill. There was no doubt in his mind that if he did not kill them first, they would shred his body as they had to the poor souls in the last area.

When he reached the end, he turned off his flashlight and saw that the enclosed passage opened up onto a wide ledge that circled the wall of a large room. Analogous entranceways from other tunnels were dotted along the perimeter of the room as well, all of which opened up onto the shelf that Sam peered from. Beneath the ledge, the walls slanted downward into a gaping pit at the bottom of the well lit room. Even though all the adjacent tunnels were void of life, Sam crouched down on the ledge and felt the bitter taste of forgotten bile and blood rise in the back of his throat once again.

Far below the high shelf, a great multitude of lizards, similar to the ones that had attacked him previously, was standing around a larger pit in the middle of the room. They chattered and whispered amongst themselves, and they moved in a mass of shimmering colors and sizes. But, what stole Sam's breath away was the lone figure of his brother in the middle of the pit.

Despite the fact that Sam was far away from Dean, he could see that Dean was essentially unharmed. There was no fresh blood on his skin, and he appeared calm and unafraid in spite of the alien monsters gathered in a mutant chorus around him.

Then, the crowd of reptiles parted as if on silent command, and Dean turned in the same direction as well. When he moved, the back of his left forearm became visible to Sam, who fought the urge to throw himself from the ledge and steal his older brother away from the place before further damage occurred. Against Dean's normally tanned skin, a light flecking of blue shimmers covered Dean's forearm. Sam did not have to touch the strange markings to know that they were scales much like the ones they had taken to the college professor days ago. Silently, Sam berated himself for allowing Dean to use the excuse of "old scabs" to deter him from the conversation. Dean had grown the scales over the night and had most likely cut them off himself.

Sam wished he had helped his brother while he knew there was more of a fighting chance for the two of them.

From the separation in the crowd, two prominent creatures emerged. Even though they appeared reptilian, Sam was reluctant to classify them as lizards, as they were so much greater than the others he had previously seen. These two were only slightly larger in size, but they walked upright easily on their two hind legs, whereas the others moved in a more crouched position, reminiscent of a slouched gorilla in comparison to an erect human. The duo had rather humanistic faces, if Sam was able to believe that such a thing was possible. Instead of the pinched yellow slits for eyes of the others, they had rounded eyes of white and blue, and their lips were not mere snarls of dried blood. What struck Sam the most was that these two both wore massive wings folded against their backs. The wings were taller than the creatures themselves, rising above their heads and scraping the ground with a dry scratch as they walked towards Dean. Although Sam doubted his chances of defeating such monsters, he angled the gun towards them anyway in preparation of them harming his brother once again.

Sam expected them to scream bestially like their counterparts, perhaps even roar and snap their wings open to a deadly span. Instead, they did something that caused Sam to nearly fall off the shelf in shock: They spoke.

"Welcome," one of them with a distinctly feminine voice said to Dean, who nodded silently in return. "We are glad you have returned, Dean Winchester."

A ripple of agreement passed through the crowd, who murmured in hisses and wordless shrieks.

"Do you understand what we ask of you?" the other creature asked in a deeper, masculine pitch.

"No," Dean answered, and even though his voice sounded familiar in its tone, for a moment, Sam did not recognize it as belonging to his brother.

The two monsters that Sam decided must be the superiors, exchanged pointed looks to one another before directing their gaze back towards Dean. When they moved closer to him, their wings rustled like dry sandpaper against the rocky floor, and Sam wondered how massive they would appear with the wings extended.

"You are to give us the blood again," the assumed male creature said. "Lest we take your own."

A flicker of something passed through Dean, and when he spoke, his voice was hollow and lacked conviction. Sam instantly recognized the tone Dean used, even though he had heard it only once before when he had tone Dean he was leaving for college. In that same defeated voice, Dean replied, "Kill or be killed, then."

"In your terms, yes. We will give you immortality and all your wishes for one mortal's life. If you cannot complete this task we set before you, then you are not the one we have wanted, and we do not suffer mistakes well."

"How long do I have?"

"Until the day of the new moon dawns." When Dean bowed his head, one of the leaders looked down at him. Even though the face that smoothed over its features was sympathetic, the words it spoke were not. "You may run in hope that we will not find you. We will find you if you do not give us the blood we desire. You are marked now for all of us like a beacon in the night."

"Why?"

"You know why. For you have searched for the same thing we now offer you in exchange for only one life. Give us the life, the blood, and we will let you drink of immortality, and your search will end at last. You will find peace with yourself once again."

Slowly, the other inferior lizards began to exit through the same opening through which the larger two had first entered until Dean was left alone with the ruling pair. His chin was pressed to his chest, head bent in loss and sorrow. Then, the more feminine of the two moved towards Dean, raised one scaled claw to his face and lifted his head to meet her eyes.

"We know your pain, for we have traveled your road before, but we cannot free you until you give us the blood. We have to know you have the strength to become something greater than the flesh of man." Dean nodded mutely, broken in their words. "Do not fear, Dean Winchester. If you are the one, you will find the courage needed, and you will not die."

With that said, they turned and left Dean alone in the pit. While Sam struggled to control his own hitched breathing, Dean pulled his arms to his chest and rubbed the back of them with cold hands. Then, he too, walked through the exit and disappeared into the black mouth.

Quickly, Sam scuttled back into the tunnel and began to run down the enclosed alleys through which he had come. He knew that he needed to return as soon as he could to the motel room where the remaining weapons were stored. Even though he wanted desperately to believe that Dean would never harm him, Sam had seen the scales on Dean's arms and the desperation on his face.

And Sam wished there was not a nagging voice in the back of his mind whispering that his older brother might be gone to him forever.


	11. The Parents

_Eleven_

The gun on the table watched Sam pace the motel room throughout the night. Its presence alone forced him to the austere realization that if Dean were to attack with nails and teeth, his own brother's gun would be used against him. It was a thought that, no matter how hard Sam pushed it away, kept returning with feral perseverance.

He knew, rationally, that he could not return to the cave and expect to save Dean from the hundreds of monsters that lurked within the rock walls. The sheer idea of overtaking that many creatures was ludicrous, and in addition to the obvious disadvantage of being outnumbered, he would have also been out of his prime territory. The middle of the desert with limited weapons, fighting against some evil he did not even understand was not where he wanted to wage war. To make matters more frustrating, Sam did not know how much he should push Dean, unsure of his older brother's current mental stability. He was partially worried that if he fought against Dean, the fragile mind that Dean now held would crack and give way to a greater monster.

But, he couldn't just _leave_ Dean there.

No, he needed another plan, something that would prepare him for a battle he did not believe he could win. All he had to do, he reminded himself with an angry snort, was survive hundreds of reptiles. The same reptiles who kidnapped children and offered them a chance at immortality. Yet, if the children did not kill for the lizards, then they would be offered up as the blood sacrifice.

Yes, he just had to survive hundreds of these reptiles.

Despite how much knowledge Sam had gained so rapidly in the past few hours, there was still something missing. There was still a vital piece that he needed to pull everything together and complete the mess that was tearing his brain apart.

Why.

Of the millions of children in the country, the lizards chose specific ones. And, out of all the adult males in the city alone, Dean had been chosen because he was, in some way, special to the reptiles.

Perhaps it was the reason for their choice in the beginning would allow Sam to defeat the lizards. If he knew the "why," there must have been a "why not," and that could lead him somewhere. As much as he wanted to go back to the cave, throw a couple sticks of the illegal dynamite Dean had purchased from a vigilante in Texas, and run, Sam knew that doing so was an incredible risk. And, he would not be able to help Dean if he was dead. His best defense—unfortunately—seemed to be knowledge.

So, strapping a pair of switchblades to the inside of his ankle, Sam returned to the library after pacing the small motel room and awaiting Dean's return for the entire night. He revisited the webpage that listed the names of the missing or deceased children in the town, and then ran the names in through the obituaries to find the children's parents. When his allotted time on the computer finished so that a gawky teenage girl with a mouthful of metal could check out the Hollywood gossip on her half an hour, Sam took the list of the parents to the reference section to manually flip through the monstrously large phonebook for personal information.

He thought he had just scribbled down the phone number of the parents for a girl who had disappeared five years ago, when there was a gentle tapping on his shoulder. However, he found upon jerking upright, that he had fallen asleep on top of the phone book and the elderly librarian was looking down at him through knotted eyebrows of disapproval.

"Sir," she said, trying to sound sympathetic although failing to do so with her lips so tightly pursed, "we have a shelter in town, if you need a place to sleep."

"No, I…college research," Sam replied, shuffling through his wrinkled papers futilely, but he could see that the lady didn't believe his answer. Even though he had not looked at himself in a mirror in over twenty-four hours, he could feel the stubble on his face and see the unwashed locks of hair drooping in his eyes.

"Well, perhaps you should go finish your research at the _college_ library," the lady told him and turned away.

Realizing that he had just been asked to leave, Sam closed the phone book and rose to his feet. He had managed to find all but three numbers of the assortment of parents of his list, and he figured that if needed, he would return to the library later when the domineering librarian had left for the day.

At a gas station a few miles from his first stop, Sam pulled out one of the police uniforms Dean and he had used three hunts ago. In the gas station bathroom, Sam quickly wet his fingers and ran them through his hair to pull it away from his face after he had changed into the navy outfit. Rummaging through the duffel bag containing their various clothes used only for "information gathering," he produced the remainder of the costume.

Sighing heavily, he strapped on the gun belt and decided that it couldn't hurt his image any. Besides, he remembered, Dean had been so eager for them to wear the belts when he first stole the uniforms from a local station. Sam rolled his eyes at the memory and finished tacking the pins belonging to an officer whose name he couldn't remember onto the blue shirt.

He ran his fingers through his hair once more, and then exited the bathroom, duffel bag slung over one shoulder and putting on a pair of sunglasses with his free hand. With the exception of the unofficial Impala, he appeared to be the perfect officer of the law.

When he threw the duffel bag into the backseat and checked the first address, he swore he heard Dean laughing from the passenger seat about how proud he was of his younger brother finally "getting it."

At all the houses, he used the excuse that crime investigators were reopening the case of the missing and deceased children due to the state's request. Typically, the parents did not argue when he flashed the badge belonging to a man from over a thousand miles away. Most of the time, they would allow him inside, where he would remove his deceiving sunglasses, slipping one end into his breast pocket, and sit on the couch while they offered him something cold to drink.

"Now," he would begin after the small talk had ended, and he would lean forward, clasping his hands together sympathetically and relaxing his face to a trusting gaze. "I'm new on the case, taking over for our last officer, so could you please tell me what…who took your child? Just for the record."

"Escaped criminal from the local prison," one sandy blonde wife answered as she looked out her beige draped window. Her long pink nails curled underneath her chin and matched the shade of lipstick she wore. "He probably buried her body somewhere in the sand."

Another father told Sam through a gruff smoker's timbre, "Must've been mountain lion. Never saw claw marks like that in all my life. 'Course," he said, lowering his voice as his wife left to put their lemonade glasses in the kitchen sink to soak, "I wouldn't tell her that. Never gonna tell her what I saw when I had to go to the morgue and identify our daughter's body."

A hysterical woman leapt to her feet when Sam asked her the question and screamed, "How should I know what took my son?" Her black curls had bobbed on her shoulders, unsettled and uncontrolled with every shriek and accusative finger pointed. "_You_ should know that! Get out of my house! _Get out!_ How dare you come around asking questions like that!"

He visited couples and single parents, parents remarried when the death of their children split up their first marriages, and parents who, despite having more children after the disappearance of their first, bent their heads and cried at the memories. Some of the people refused to talk to him and slammed the door in his face when he explained that he was from the state headquarters. They yelled that the cops hadn't done much good before, so the police needn't get involved in their business again.

At every house where he was invited inside, he took notes in a notebook that used to contain his lab results from a basic chemistry class at college. During a hunt when Dean and he had been forced to spend the night in a forest after a werewolf killing, they had ripped out the viable chemistry notes and used them to start a fire to keep themselves warm. Listening to the men and women talk, he was once again reminded of how his college life was slowly becoming enveloped within the supernatural mess of hunting.

After exhausting his list of people, Sam headed back to the motel room where he looked over the accumulated data. As he had suspected, there was nothing in common between the children except for the age range. Then, halfway through his third read and his bottle of water, he began to notice something else. Quickly, he turned on the laptop and opened the virtual encyclopedia program installed on the portable machine. Following several minutes of clicking and typing, he discovered the first similarity that at last gave him hope that he was finding something worthwhile.

All of the children's bodies had been found sometime during the day before the night of the new moon that month. If the bodies were found after that night, they were usually in more advanced stages of decay to indicate that it was a possibility that death had occurred on the day of the new moon. Remembering the reptiles' words to Dean that he had to kill before the morning of the new moon, Sam shook his head.

"Were_lizards_." He smacked his hand once against the table hard enough to make it sting all the way through his elbow. "Goddamned werelizards." Then he buried his head against his chest and began to laugh, allowing the sheer exasperation of his situation overtake him. He rested his arms on the table and placed his chin against them, laughing until his body shook, laughing until he could only hear his own throaty chuckles mingling with sobs, and laughing until he wiped away the pained tears in his eyes.

It was well after midnight when Sam finally finished cleaning and loading the guns. The television was on in front of him, but he was not paying attention to the virtual pictures, as he was fingering the gun beside his hip and merely waiting. There was a jingling of keys outside the door, and he immediately turned off the television and rose to his feet. The gun moved up in one smooth motion of promise. When the door opened, Dean, wearing his leather jacket despite the desert heat, walked through nonchalantly.

He gave Sam only a quick flicker of a gaze, but there was instantly a human veil falling over the blackness in his eyes when he spoke. His words belonged to an actor in Dean's body instead of the very man himself. "Man, I've got to tell you about the night I've had! And this blonde! Oh! The things she could do with her—"

The gun clicked and shattered the silence.

Dean's head snapped up, and he looked up at Sam where the endless black void of the gun stared at his from across the room. There was a momentary flash of fear on his face, which was quickly erased by true confusion and forced concern.

"Sam…?" he began. His pitch did not crack, and he shut the door behind him quietly, not turning his back to Sam.

Sam fought desperately to keep the tremble out of his voice when he spoke. The gun wavered only once, and he tightened his muscles to control himself. A cold chill passed over his skin, and he regretted all of the moments he had failed to act, which had led him up to the present.

This was his brother.

A man. A monster.

Dean in all.

But, Sam spoke and he raised the gun a little higher, wondering if he would have the strength to pull the trigger against the person composed of his own flesh and blood if his life depended upon that choice. "We need to talk," he said.


	12. The Word

_Twelve_

"We need to talk."

When Dean moved away from the door that he had shut behind him, his gaze never left Sam, and the gun Sam held never faltered. Dean never grew any closer to Sam; he moved to a different area of the room away from the entrance instead. Even though Dean had been away from what Sam would label as "modern society" for over a day, Dean's eyes were bright and glittering, his skin smooth with the lack of stubble, and he showed no signs of obvious fatigue. On the other hand, Sam had large black circles smeared under drooping and bloodshot eyes, and if sleep happened to merely whisper coyly to him, he would instantly collapse. Yet, he held the gun tight in his fingers; a gun that had been used to kill creatures of the night was now being used against his own brother.

"What's going on, Sammy?" Dean asked casually, opening his hands in a friendly gesture. "C'mon, I should've said something, I know, but it was late, I needed air, you were asleep….Went outside and there was this blonde—like I was tryin' to tell you?"

"Dean, please."

There was a glint of undistinguishable emotion across Dean's face, but he made no direct reaction to Sam's statement and continued nonchalantly, "And, so, yeah. Cut me some slack. I haven't gotten laid in…" He waved his hand flippantly in the air. "A really long time. Probably wouldn't hurt you to do the same, right? Right. But, let's just say, me and her, yeah, we had a _good _time." The smile stretching across his face seemed fragile in its forced bravado, and the slightest wind of truth would shatter him completely, baring his soul for all to see the blackness within.

When Sam's only response was a breathy inhalation, Dean sighed roughly. "Put the damn gun down," he snapped in a tone that Sam recognized as exasperation. It was the same tone Dean frequently used when things weren't going exactly his way. "What the _hell_ is wrong with you? Goddammit, Sam. Put the gun away already." Just as Dean started to sit down in one of the chairs at the small table, Sam moved closer and aimed the firearm at Dean's chest.

"Give me the truth."

"Truth? About _what_?"

"Last night. The truth."

"The blonde—she—I told _you_…What the hell has gotten into you?"

"Dean!" Sam's voice was a whip snap in the pressing silence of the room, and Dean flinched and looked away from his brother's deep, accusatory tone. "I know where you were last night. I saw you with them. Those things. Those lizards. I know, Dean."

Suddenly, Dean's body stiffened in the chair as if he had been prodded, and he looked up at Sam through fogged eyes. Before Dean could speak, Sam continued in his mad ramble, even though Dean's face grew narrow and agitated.

"I saw what they do. They kill people, Dean. They've killed _hundreds_ of children! I don't know what deal you've made with them, but let me help you, please. Let me help you before it's too late."

"Stop it."

"No, no, I won't. I heard all their promises of immortality and that bunch of bullshit—"

"Sam, I'm warning you. Stop it."

Undeterred, Sam took one of his hands off the gun to point his index finger at Dean angrily. "You have to _kill_ to get whatever the hell they've promised you. Do you realize this? You don't even know if they're going to follow through. You can't just—"

In a sudden flash, Dean leapt to his feet, bringing himself to a standing position against his younger brother. With the back of his hand, he hit Sam sharply across the cheek, causing Sam's head to whip to the side. There was a lightning crack of skin striking skin, and in the rapid moment of pain and surprise, the gun tumbled to the carpet underneath one of the beds.

More emotionally than physically hurt, Sam paused for a fraction of a second, long enough to allow Dean the opportunity to roughly throw him against the wall, where he slid to a seated position with his back to the chipped plaster. With the wind knocked out of him, Sam wheezed in short, hitched gasps and clutched his abdomen weakly. Dean gave an indifferent glance down to his younger brother, and he readjusted the bunched leather around his shoulders as a boxer would shake himself off after a match against his opponent.

Then, he glared down at Sam, and Dean pointed his finger sharply in a threatening manner. "Stay the hell away from me," he growled in his throat. When his eyes, obscured by the darkness that was slowly consuming him, met Sam's, a single word passed between them on the air, and Sam felt a pit open in the depths of his stomach. He was looking at a man he no longer recognized.

Just as Dean began to walk away towards the door to make his escape, Sam lurched forward in a frantic attempt of sore muscles and tackled his older brother. Dean tumbled to the ground under the sudden attack. They fumbled in a heap of squirming, angry limbs and sputtered curses before Sam, using his extra height, managed to pin Dean to the ground.

"I can help you!" he yelled, grabbing the smooth leather jacket in his fists. He was breathing heavily, unable to catch his breath from the fear coursing through him. "Dammit, I'm your _brother_. We can beat this together."

A storm cloud rolled over Dean's face as he glared up at Sam from beneath dark lids. There was a muscle twitching in the side of his face, when he snarled, "We're not _together_! What kind of dream world are you living in? This is _my_ problem! You need to leave me alone!"

Dean pushed at Sam's shoulders, trying to will him to rise, but the combination of Sam's sheer physical size and overwhelmed adrenaline kept Dean pinned to the carpeting. "I don't care what you want!" Sam shouted. "I'm not going to let you run off and do whatever the hell it is you have to do for _them_!"

Dean chuckled in the back of his throat, a low murmur of approaching thunder. "They understand me a _hell_ of a lot better than you do. You don't know how I've felt every damn day. You don't know! You don't _know_! You can't feel it because you can't remember it!" He grinned maliciously, a snarl of white teeth between red fleshly lips. "You think losing Jess was bad? She was just your _girlfriend_, Sammy. You had her for a bit when you ran out, and then she died. End of story. All right? You still had me and Dad—even if you were too damn good for us. But you had _us_."

"You bastard," Sam hissed through clenched teeth.

"When Mom died, I had _nobody_. Nobody! I lost Dad _and _Mom that day. Dad died when Mom did!" Dean lurched upward, bringing his face closer to Sam's, until Sam could see the bloodshot capillaries curling in demonic tendrils near the golden flecks of the centers of Dean's eyes. "You don't remember Dad before Mom died, do you? Do you?"

"This isn't you talking."

"You know your little motel owner friend? Hmm?" Dean's eyes flashed wickedly, crinkles forming around their edges as he grinned eccentrically. "They took in his daughter when she wanted an escape from her pain. They knew, just like they knew that I wanted an escape from my life and pain. She would be given immortality for a death to them."

"Her mother," Sam whispered hoarsely.

"Exactly. But the gunfire scared her away, and she ran out when the guy shot at her in her new form. And then, because she wasn't _strong enough_ to give them the blood, they took her own. They killed her all right, the old man was right about that, but she tried to kill first to save herself."

"Why her mother?"

"Haven't you figured it out, smart college boy Sammy? Haven't you? Her mother caused her pain, and she wanted to take it away."

"She was abused."

"Oh yes," Dean hissed, suddenly relaxing with the revelation of the truth dawning upon Sam.

"You weren't abused, Dean. If that's what you think, then you're wrong. We weren't _abused_. You even said it yourself: Dad did the best he could—"

"Did it matter!" Dean yelled, snapping from his calm state and struggling to free himself yet again. "Mom was already gone! Do you know what she smelled like before she went to bed, and what kind of cookies she liked to bake? Do you know the sound of her laughing? Do you know what it was like to have her hold you at night when you woke up with a nightmare? Imagine having all that torn away from you, and your dad—the one person who you thought would never leave you—go away, too." Dean leaned back against the carpet, resting the back of his head gently against the floor, and he whispered, "I lose _everyone_."

"Lost," Sam whispered. His heart was pounding wildly in his ears, and the fingers holding Dean to the ground suddenly felt disconnected from his own body.

"No, _lose_, Sammy, lose."

"Fight them."

"No, I'm tired of feeling this way. I want a new life."

"I'm not going to let you do this."

Dean laughed lowly again, a rasping stutter rolling from his lips. "I don't think you really have much of a choice in the matter." Having said that, he threw himself upward so powerfully that Sam tumbled off him to land in a disjointed pile on the ground. Dean scrambled quickly to his feet and dashed for the door. Just before he reached the exit, Sam managed to get close enough to snatch the collar of Dean's jacket between his fingers.

There was a suspended moment when Dean twisted his body and slid out of the coat, leaving himself exposed. His arms were now completely covered in thick blue scales that ran up underneath his thin shirt and climbed down the back of his neck where the collar of the coat had rested. His mouth fell open in horror as the coat pulled away from him and shock smeared with anger flickered across his face.

Beneath Sam's pained fingers, the leather was still warm, and one word echoed through Sam's mind when he lifted his head to look upon his brother. He dropped the coat and bolted towards Dean, screaming senselessly with the knowledge that if Dean escaped, an innocent life would be taken or he would lose Dean forever.

However, Dean seemed to dissipate into the dark wind before Sam could even reach the opened door. Defeated, Sam sagged against the doorframe, with the one word rolling over him like a threat of fatal thunder in his mind. He brought his hands to his face and rubbed his callused fingers over his skin, fighting to control his ragged breathing. When he lifted his eyes to the thick sky, Sam realized he would have to risk his life to bring back the only brother he had.

And, when the night breeze whispered that one word, it stung the side of Sam's face and slipped around his ears: _Monster._


	13. The Truths

_Thirteen_

He heard Sam's voice rising on the wind, a plaintive cry stemming from primal horror over what was happening, and yet Dean continued into the darkness that wrapped its arms around him and welcomed him into its company. When he looked at the sky, he sensed, rather than saw, the rising sun that would begin the day of the new moon and ultimately decide whether he lived or died.

It would not be much longer now.

At a speed that no human could sustain for the same distance, Dean moved across the sand with the realization that he needed to return to the cave one last time to speak with the superior pair. He knew what was required of him, and he intended to perform his fatal task to the fullest degree. If he had to kill, then he would kill. He would take the offered body back to the cave, where the new sacrificial blood would ensure the monsters' survival for another month. Then, at last, he too would be allowed to drink of the masters' blood and gain both their immortality and freedom from earthly pains.

He thought back on all that he had been told when the masters had first spoken to him. Yes, he had been older than the abused children they typically saved, but this was something they were willing to overlook. After all, there were no constricting laws for the ages of children they saved. The young were more easily accepting of the idea of salvation from a greater power, and their pain was often the greatest. While the superiors would live forever, their strength was wavering after the continual giving of blood to increase their reptilian numbers. They had chosen Dean to specifically join the powerful ranks that only the two of them had occupied for hundreds of years. In choosing him over a child, they had chosen one to stand beside them, instead of below.

When Sam and Dean had first come to the city what seemed like years ago, the brothers were still recovering from the violent poltergeist attack that had killed the young mother. With the mother's death hanging so heavily on Dean, who had heard her screams from his trapped position in the basement of the home, the present had merged with the past to propel him into his own pain of losing a mother. The creatures immediately sensed the overwhelming pain that suffocated his senses. He was no abused child of his parents. He was an abused child of the world.

So, the superiors sent one of their followers to come into his motel room and steal him away, not counting on Sam to shoot at the one they sent. Even though Dean had not yet looked upon their faces, he was already connected with them, for he sensed their world and deeds when he touched the scale that had been left behind. He heard the children that they had killed crying, and he heard the children crying who had been abused by their parents. The images flooded into his brain and slowly began to nibble away at his resolves to eventually break him down piece by piece. Feeling Dean's immense pain and confusion, the creatures could not turn away again, so they returned for a second time, bringing with them not one, but two followers, in case the younger brother tried to fight again.

The second time, the monsters were able to overpower Dean, who consciously did not understand the favor they were doing him. But their words had already slipped into the cracks of his mind, and while they were still foreign syllables whispering in his ears, the message was already planted within him. The younger brother was knocked unconscious during the brief attack, which was a blessing in its own right as his devotion to Dean was overwhelming and often undeterred. Then, with Dean immobilized as well, they took him back to the cave where they drank of his blood before presenting him to the masters.

The leading pair had then dipped their heads low and drank from the blood of his heart until Dean slipped out of consciousness from the sheer shock of the situation wrapped around him. When he had awoken later, naked and cold, he had been alone in the cave in a small room where they intended for him to stay and heal. However, he grabbed his bloodied clothes and dressed himself before stumbling out of the blackened tunnels into the bright sunlight. It had not been long until he had fainted from the lack of blood and fatigue on the desert sand. Unlike the children who had stayed in the cave to undergo their transformation from human to reptilian creature, Dean had fled—much to the monsters' surprise. Before they could go to him, Dean's unknowing mortal brother had taken him within his own arms and carried him back to the world that Dean was slowly being separated from.

But this was no matter. The seed had already been planted in Dean's mind when they drank of his blood. With each tooth and nail, with each tear and scream, the seed took root when their saliva and his blood mixed. As the time passed, the shadows began to grow until they were at last able to whisper to him during the night. Perhaps he would have been able to fight them before, but with the darkness looping its tendrils in him, he was slowly breaking down to their will.

When Dean returned to the cave voluntarily and left Sam in the middle of the night, the creatures had allowed him to ask questions for hours on end so that he would be able to fully understand the complexity of his situation. It was how he came to learn the truth of the matter beyond Sam's researched assumptions.

As Sam had determined through his readings, there had been killings across the entire country and some farther away that had not been recorded by detailed coroners. If the monsters lived in the North, they were only active during the warmer weather due to their cold-blooded nature. In the winter months, they hibernated far underground and rose during the summer to gather the abused children and offer them a chance at greater salvation. Although there were many smaller bands dotted here and there throughout the states, the two masters of the entire species resided not far from the very motel where Sam now scrambled for weapons of defense.

It had always been the children, the superiors explained, because the children could never fully get past their pain, and no matter how many years it had been, the hurt was always so sharp and so fresh. While adults suffered as well, and the monsters were able to recognize this when they passed the agonized elders, such pain was too clouded and jumbled with the complexities of adulthood. There were ulterior motives, such as wanting the pain for sympathy, deceit, bribery, and other feelings the creatures could not name. A child's pain was only pain.

When Dean had been told this, he asked why, if the creatures only went after children, they had not taken him when he was a child. They had looked away, embarrassed, it seemed, and explained that his father's devotion and love had muted the terrible death of his mother within their family dynamics. With John's protection so suffocating and strong, Dean's pain of losing his mother had only been a glimmer, and the loss of his content father after the death of Mary was obscured by Dean's military dedication to his father.

And then Sam had left with stinging words that reeked of rejection, and that disappearance had pulled away some of the power of the family that Dean had so strongly believed in. But, there had still been John, and even though Sam's leaving was constantly a fresh wound in his side, Dean had continued through the gray mornings and black nights under the assumption that if John were to ever leave, it would not be for long.

Then John left.

And stayed gone.

Sam returned unwillingly only because his girlfriend had been ripped away from him, and he desired bloodshed to fuel the revenge that would quell his pain, not because he searched out his older brother like Dean had searched for him. Sam, however loyal and caring to Dean, did not want to remain in his brother's ways forever, and so his return to California was inevitable.

So, stripped of his father, pressed with his younger brother's eventual departure, and caught in the images of his mother that arose from the previous hunt, Dean was vulnerable and bleeding, ripe with pain.

He had been perfect for them.

Pulling himself out his memories, Dean now paused at the entrance of the cave and looked behind him to ensure that Sam hadn't been following him all this time. Dean crouched and slipped through the entrance, able to see where he was going even in the dark tunnels. His senses were rapidly increasing as time went by, and it would not be long before he was equally as powerful as they were.

He passed by the other lizards who eyed him suspiciously, but they made no move towards him. Even though he had not yet been entirely transformed, they already recognized him as being one of their own. He entered the superiors' chambers, and the leading pair both looked up as though they had been expecting his arrival.

"You have not yet killed," the male said to him.

"I know," Dean replied. "I needed to see you both again."

"We do not doubt your strength," the female responded, looking to the male who stood slightly behind her. "You are more powerful now, even in a remainder of your human state, than many of those who have been completely enveloped within us." When Dean didn't answer, she continued, "Follow me. I think there's something you need to see."

The male gave a glance towards Dean, then turned and walked in an opposite direction, as the other two went down one of the dark corridors. The female led the way, her massive wings gently fluttering as she moved in long, powerful strides with Dean close behind. After some time of walking through the darkness where the water dripped in echoed clips, they entered an illuminated chamber with high rising walls and a curved ceiling. Pale light trickled down from above and cast tall shadows on the walls.

In the center of the room, there was a large structure that appeared to be a crude, alien fountain, taller than Dean with a dark liquid slowly trickling over its sides. The female gave a slight nod with her scaled head in the direction of the statue, and Dean moved forward hesitantly, unsure of what he would discover. Once he was close enough, he was able to see that the level of the liquid was extremely low and probably would not last much longer. When he tilted his head to the side, the liquid flashed red in sudden illumination, and he knew that this was the blood sacrifice they needed to endure.

"We drink from this every morning," the creature said from behind Dean. Her voice was light, unhurried and smooth with a lyrical quality around her words. "We drink, and all that the two of us have created, live another day. If we do not drink, we die, and so all we have created, dies as well."

"Me too?"

"No." She sighed heavily with the admittance of the truth. "You would not die, as you have not drank of our blood yet. You will die only if you do not give us the blood. We must survive one way or another. To humans, killing a crime, a grave injustice of mortality, but it is the only way we will see another sunrise."

"Yes."

"Dean," the female continued, moving closer to him to stand beside him. She smelled of all things natural and wholesome that he had ever known. It was, he realized, the scent of his mother, and the shred of rationalization he had left wondered if this was to pull him deeper to them. "We know that your brother tried to speak to you."

"How did you—"

"We see all that you see, and hear all that you hear. Ever since we drank of your blood, we have been connected to you, and thus know all that you do. As your powers grow, so does our connection with you. It is how we find those that we must kill, no matter how far they run. We saw the conversation between your brother and you."

"My brother is irrelevant."

"Do you still love him?"

Dean turned towards her, eyebrows narrowing in confusion. "What?" His voice was a raspy choke of surprise.

"You are changing rapidly, but there is still part of you that is human. I do not know what this 'love' is, but I know that you humans value it greatly. I know that it has more power over you than anything else on this earth does. It is obvious that he still loves you as his older brother, and he has already decided that if he has to die to save you, he will."

"He doesn't understand anything. Least of all, me."

"Perhaps," she admitted, and she walked closer to the fountain to dip a scaled claw into the blood. When she lifted her finger, the liquid dripped off the end in tiny, bloated droplets that hit the surface and rippled around the edges. "But, as you are strong, so is he. You are not a child, like so many of those we have saved before you. The children had no one who would fight for them as he is willing to fight for you."

"He left our family. He left me." Dean shook his head angrily. "No. No, he is only human. Just a human. That is all."

The female nodded and gazed at the fountain, allowing several long moments of silence to pass between them. She could hear the truth in Dean's words and knew that his mind was already falling under their spell, but there was still a glimmer of the boy who had carried his brother out of a burning building left within. "You do not have much time," she finally whispered. "The sun approaches."

"How long will you give me?"

"We will come for you minutes before the sun rises. If you have the blood, you shall live forever. If you do not, we shall take your own."

"All right."

"Hurry," she replied, turning her back towards him. "We will be waiting."

With that, Dean turned and exited the cave with the knowledge resting on him of what he had to do to see the next sunrise. His morals were twisting away under the pressure of the creatures, and underneath his fingertips, glinting talons had already begun to protrude with deadly intentions. Every minute that passed signaled the closing of his future.


	14. The Dawning

_Fourteen_

The sky was still dark, dotted only by the presence of a few rare stars and emptied of the promise of a moon. In a motel room once shared between two brothers, a single table lamp illuminated the walls to smear shadows on the furniture and to shimmer dubiously over the glistening weapons. Fervently, Sam grabbed the deadliest weapons he knew he would be able to easily carry. The side of his face was beginning to darken with bruising from where he had been so violently hit, and his abdominal muscles were still sore enough to be noticed when he bent.

Earlier, Sam had come to the rationalization that fighting against the creatures would be futile in their numbers and strength against his own. Now, however, such rationales were merely wasted in the stark reality of what could occur if he did not fight. Dean could be gone to him forever and would join the ranks of murderous creatures that lacked judgment or morals.

Sam did not know exactly what he was planning, but a small voice of instinct whispered that he might not live to see another day. There would be lives taken, he was sure of this, and he could only hope that it would not be the human lives to crumble. And if humans, he decided, had to die, he could only wish that it wouldn't be Dean.

Slowly, he sank down on his bed where Dean's discarded leather jacket now lay. The guns next to Sam were not filled with rock salt or silver bullets. They were armed with bullets that could be used to kill a simple mortal man, and they now waited patiently while he wrapped his fists in the coat. He brought the leather to his nose and pressed his face deep against the material, inhaling the scent that he had associated with Dean even before he consciously recognized it.

It was difficult to remember a time when Dean had not owned a leather coat, even if it wasn't the same one Sam now held between sore fists. The jackets eventually came to symbolize Dean, Sam realized, in some twisted way. Even when Sam had left for college, he would occasionally see a person on a cooler Californian night, wearing a brown leather jacket, and he would think of Dean. By watching Dean run from the jacket he valued nearly as much as his car, he seemed to have been stripped of the last shred of humanity he contained.

Dean was dying, and this time, there was no faith healer to press curing hands against his forehead and summon the Grim Reaper across time and space for salvation. This time, the murder and the victim were all within Dean's head, and that was a place that Sam had been denied for years upon years. Sam wondered if it was even possible for him to have an impact on Dean at this point.

But, he rose to his feet nonetheless, laying the leather jacket back on the bed and picking up his assorted weapons. His plan was coarse and involved the dynamite he had contemplated using earlier. With the guns he would kill what creatures he could, but he knew that destroying the cave from the inside was incredibly dangerous. If nothing else, Sam would prove to his older brother that Dean hadn't lost him as he so wanted to believe. Sam was right there, and if it meant dying to prove such a point, he was more prepared for the idea than he thought he would have been.

Yet, even as he pulled the motel door closed behind him and gazed up at the starless sky, he didn't realize he had started to cry until he felt the cool wind pull his tears down his face.

- - - - -

Not far from where Sam moved slowly across the sand with the diligent pace of a man who knows he may be heading to his death, Dean was looking up at the sky with thoughts of how foolish his brother was going to be. In all of Sam's research, he had failed to notice the murders of family members and close friends in the families whose children had disappeared. He had never seen the death dates for these people, as that was not the information he was looking for, although it was the information that was going to send him to his grave.

Dean sighed, inhaling the desert's scent and thinking back on the last piece of knowledge he had been told. When the children were taken in, they were told that they had to kill in order to live. However, they could not kill just anybody. They had to kill the person who they felt was most responsible for their pain. Typically, this was an abusive parent, but it also could have been the molesting uncle or the preaching grandmother. With this person dispersed, the child's pain was also removed, and they were able to continue on to immortality with the knowledge that their pain was buried away forever.

Sharply, he closed his fingers into tight fists where razor-sharp talons curved from his fingertips. When he formed the fists, the claws made shallow cuts in the palm of his hand. He brought his bleeding hands to his face, where the blood twisted and snaked down the inside of his forearm in glistening rivulets. In his nocturnal vision, the blood glowed bright red against the cool blue of his enveloping scales.

Then, he bent his head and licked at the dripping wounds with his forked purple tongue, causing the taste to fill his senses and buzz through him with a feverish enthusiasm. He pressed his mouth against the gashes in his palm and sucked until the thick liquid leaked inside his mouth and ran down his throat.

When he paused to breathe, he could feel his own blood running down the corners of his mouth and ignored it to gaze upward again. Running his tongue along his teeth, he could feel how they had elongated into daggers with the capabilities of tearing living flesh and muscle. He thought back to all the times he had been reduced to crude human guns and knives to take life. No longer would he have to rely on such materialistic weapons; he knew that tonight was going to be a new start for him.

He looked down at his clawed hands again, pointing his fingers towards the sky as he stared as his palm where his blood was dried in crimson spider webs. How foolish had Sam been not to see the connection before it was too late, Dean thought morosely. Sam's belief resided in the idea that Dean would have to kill anyone to live, when in truth, Sam's blood alone could guarantee that Dean would see another sunrise. Finally, Dean raised one hand haphazardly and wiped away the blood on his mouth. _Oh, Sammy, _he thought. _I want to gaze into your eyes as the light goes out on your life. _

- - - - -

When Sam finally saw Dean what seemed like hours later, he barely recognized the man he used to know as his brother. The scales had completely covered Dean's arms and had crept up the sides of his face in blotched fingerprints. There were still small patches of visible skin on his cheeks and around his eyes, but the rest of his tanned skin was now covered in the blue scales. His fingers were elongated and thicker, each bearing a massive hooked claw at the end, and Dean's lips had lost some of their pink, human coloring. He moved fluidly and seemed to float above the sand.

"Sammy," he hissed, baring fangs that sent a primal shiver down Sam's spine. "So good of you to have come."

Sam raised the gun to the monster that was supposed to be his brother and bit down hard on his jaw. He tried to believe that was not blood he saw on Dean's teeth, and he focused his thoughts elsewhere. After all, this was not the way he wanted things to be, but Dean was clearly in his way, and Sam would at least have to immobilize Dean before being able to destroy the lizards at the cave.

However, Sam's thoughts were quickly jarred from his mind when Dean danced forward with one of his hands raised to strike Sam. Uncontrollably, Sam fired and would later berate himself for the gesture, but Dean spiraled out of the way, moving far too fast for Sam to hit. As Dean darted out of the way, he came close enough to his younger brother to slash Sam's forearm open in long, deep streaks.

Sam struggled not to scream and instead inhaled sharply, cursing the pain. Hot, blistering tears rose to his eyes as he glanced down at his arm before looking up and wheezing through clenched teeth to avoid the wail of pain bubbling up inside him. Through sweat-clumped hair, he saw Dean leering down at him.

"Smart college boy," Dean mocked. "Didn't see it coming, did you?"

"See what?" Sam breathed. Before Dean answered him, he again moved forward and dug his nails into the muscle directly below Sam's shoulder. This time, Sam did scream, and as Dean dug his claws further into Sam's skin, Sam crumbled to his knees under the pain. When Dean pulled his nails from the punctures he had made, he lifted his claws to his lips and licked the blood off the ends. From Sam's arm, the blood flowed in fervent gushes, soaking the sleeve of Sam's t-shirt and staining his skin

As Sam knelt on the ground with his head bent and trying to collect his breath, Dean walked to him again. Between two massive, scaled fingers, he grabbed Sam's face to crane his younger brother's head upward to look at him. When he pressed his claws to Sam's cheeks, shallow new cuts were sliced into Sam's skin.

"It was the ones who caused the pain that the kids had to kill in order to live." As he talked, he pressed his nails deeper, causing Sam to writhe and grimace. "Well, little brother, guess who I have to kill to live? You'll find this rather funny, I'm sure. Quite the laugh."

"Go to hell," Sam growled.

"Not if you get there first," Dean chuckled, and his eyes glinted maliciously in the slowly arriving sun that was still gray in its new rising.

Sam couldn't bring himself to raise the gun against his brother. Monster or not, he could not lift the gun and shoot Dean point blank in the forehead, even if it meant ending his own pain.

"You're not my brother."

"Then prove it. Shoot me, you arrogant little bastard."

Abruptly, Dean released his hold on Sam, causing Sam to topple forward on his hands and knees in the sand. "I'm going to kill you now. Slow. Painful. Like you did to me when you left for California. I want to look at you when you die."

"I didn't leave—" Sam began, but he was harshly cut off when Dean slapped him across the face. Unlike the previous time when Dean had hit Sam in the motel room and left him with a simplistic bruise, Dean's claws now ripped long, flayed lines into Sam's raw flesh.

"You _left_!" Dean yelled. "Don't you ever say you didn't! You liar!"

Finally, swallowing the lump of moralistic hesitation in his throat, Sam pushed himself to his feet and fired. Dean managed to dart out of the initial bullet's way, but when Sam fired again, there was a sharp explosion of splattering red. When Dean stopped moving, Sam was able to see the bullet hole oozing fresh blood on Dean's leg through the ripped denim.

Before Dean could retaliate, he lifted his head, and Sam followed the distracted gaze of his brother. Against the ever-rising sun, two large creatures flew in a pair of black shadows. Before they even landed, Dean screamed madly, "_No_! I've got him! He is _mine_!"

When they finally landed and stood before the brothers, Sam was able to see that they were the two superiors he had seen Dean talking with not so long ago. As they settled on the ground, their powerful wings began to fold behind them, and they moved swiftly over the sand in quickening footsteps.

"You have had your time. We will not die," the male said.

"No! Give me a little longer! I will take him!"

"No," the female responded. "We will take you both."

With all three otherwise engaged, Sam finally saw his escape from the chaos, and he shot.

There was a piercing scream, and a body collapsed to the ground with a convulsive shake of blood and gray matter.

The male of the species fell to the ground, with a round black hole through his forehead, and his eyes still wide opened. Even before his limp form landed on the sand, his scales were already beginning to peel away in thick flakes. By the time he rested on the sand long enough for the blood to seep from the back of his head, his scales were on the ground around him, and he looked up through human eyes at the brightening sky.

Frantically, the female threw herself on top of the human body of her partner and wailed with her scaled face turned up to the growing illumination. Her words were unintelligent cries of pain while she raised her fists to the sky.

In complete silence, Dean stared with wide, panicked eyes. Frozen in place, he watched the two creatures, who he had assumed to be utterly immortal, crumble.

Keeping an eye on Dean, Sam moved forward to the female and leveled the gun at her. The gun wavered in his grasp, but when it clicked into place, she turned her attention to him. Through watery, yellowed eyes, she gazed up at him, her wails quieted, and then she looked to Dean, who stood off to the side of his brother.

"You never really needed us, did you?" she whispered to Dean. In the distance, the light grew stronger, and slowly, her scales began to fall off her body, revealing pale, white skin. She ignored her demise, and continued in a voice that became increasingly feminine, "He has always kept you in his life as much as you have kept him. Remember that. You've never been as alone as you thought, nor will you ever be."

Even before Sam could pull the trigger, she threw her head back with a blasting shriek as the sun rose fully on the horizon. She was instantly transformed into an inferno of blazing white light, causing Sam to shield his eyes from the sight, even as his ears rang with the high-pitched screech of her voice.

Next to him, Dean began to stagger forward as if drunk, before collapsing in a heap on the ground where he convulsed rapidly. Sam screamed his brother's name and threw himself forward towards Dean's unconscious figure. A violent tremor passed across the sand like a massive earthquake. Before Sam lost consciousness, he pressed his face to Dean's chest and whispered in a hitching gasp, "No. You can't leave now."

As Sam's world darkened and swirled in black, the sun burst into a furious fire and brought with it the blessing of a new morning at long last.


	15. The Sun

_Fifteen_

Dean awoke with the sun above him, burning through his eyelids and turning his vision white when he rapidly blinked. There was a voice whispering in his ear, and as he twisted away from the words, a pair of strong hands grabbed his shoulders and pulled him to a seated position. The voice said his name again, and he forced himself to open his eyes. His vision flared in smears of yellows and whites before he was able to see the pair of large brown eyes staring back at him. For a moment of paralyzing confusion, the image swirled and two eyes became four, one nose into two, then at last when the face stood still, Dean saw his brother.

"Dean," Sam whispered, and a faint smile tugged at the corners of his swollen lips. On the side of his face, long streaks of opened flesh had dried to twisted, brown pieces, and thin streams of blood clung to his neck in crusted rivulets. When Sam spoke again, he seemed to be ignoring the wounds on his body and focused instead on Dean. "Hey, it is you this time, right?"

Dean looked up at Sam, who was crouched next to him, and he shook his throbbing head. Dean's limbs hurt, and he felt disoriented and disconnected from his own body, as if he had spent the last few days in a perfectly inebriated state. He looked at Sam's face again, and then allowed his eyes wander to the puncture wounds around Sam's shoulder and the claw marks down his arm. Sam's sleeve was crisp with the dried blood, and the red liquid had turned to thick, crimson flakes on his arm, matting his hair into clumps. It was obvious, though, that the wounds were still fairly fresh, despite the thin layer of scabbing that had already occurred.

Not meeting Sam's eyes, Dean choked out, "Your…arm…face."

As if being reminded of the terrible markings on his body, Sam flinched slightly, but did not loosen his hold on Dean's shoulders. When he shrugged, it was a failed, half-hearted attempt at nonchalance. "We don't have to talk about it now."

"I did that."

The admission hung in the air like a gunshot at midnight, and Sam looked away from his brother's clean face in guilt that did not belong to him. Dean's skin was smooth again, and the scales lay scattered in a pile around him on the sand, as a nightmare wiped away from the light of the morning. His eyes, although their human shade, were still glittering and focused. "Dean," Sam finally said quietly, "you weren't—you didn't...It wasn't like that."

Dean sighed, then grabbed Sam's arms and held on tightly, careful not to squeeze too tightly near the claw marks. There was a long moment when Dean merely held onto Sam's forearms, while Sam clutched his older brother's shoulders, neither of them saying anything. Nothing could rival the slings that Dean had hurled so truthfully at Sam when Dean's destroyed inhibitions had allowed his words to tumble freely. The marks on Sam's body would soon fade to white scars that would forever wear Dean's signature, no matter how much he wished otherwise.

Dean wondered if he would ever be able to forgive himself for what he had done to his brother. Bowing his head so that he did not have to look upon Sam's face, he whispered, "Sammy…I, God, I—I'm sorry."

Sam said nothing, and instead pulled Dean close to him in a tight embrace. He couldn't remember the last time Dean had allowed himself to be held so willingly and so strongly. But Sam bent his head to the pale skin on Dean's neck, and the faint scent of leather met his nose. This was his brother, and Sam had been willing to die for him. Dean had nearly been lost, and now, despite everything, they were together again.

Hearing Dean's hoarse apology, Sam knew that he had already forgiven Dean the moment he woke up and looked at Sam through human eyes again. There were no apologies that needed to be offered anymore.

Finally Sam, refusing to loosen his worried hold on his brother, said, "Don't."

- - - - -

They rose to their feet, although Dean needed some assistance to get to a standing position with the bullet wound in his leg. After he had regained his balance and ignored the throb of pain in his muscle, the two brothers walked together to the two human forms on the sand. The man lay on his back with his round eyes opened to the sun, the bullet hole turned black in his forehead, while the female was collapsed across her partner's body. She had long, black hair that cascaded down her back and fluttered gently in the wind, and her human face was upturned so that her faded green eyes stared out at nothing.

Hesitantly, Dean bent down beside her and pulled a few of the silken strands of hair away from her face. Under the sunlight her skin was warm against the back of his finger, and he bit down on his lower lip as the threat of tears invaded his emotions. His boots crunched over the scales on the ground, and he felt a cold chill run up his spine, like the feeling of stepping on a fresh grave. Tenderly, he closed her eyelids and sighed heavily to himself.

"We need to take them back," he said to Sam. "We can't leave them out here."

Sam paused before speaking, as if he was contemplating whether or not to voice the protest welling up inside his mind that neither of them was in any condition to go walking across the desert. But when he looked down at his older brother, who was brushing away the wispy hair of a beautiful woman with such care, Sam could only nod in agreement.

- - - - -

Sam carried the man he had killed back to the cave, and Dean carried the woman. They walked together in silence, and when they reached the dwelling that formerly belonged to the lizards, Dean entered first and went to the chambers the two people had occupied when they were the ruling pair. He walked down the same corridor the woman had led him, and when he entered the room where the fountain used to stand, he was not completely surprised to see that it no longer existed.

Gently, Dean laid the woman on the ground, and Sam did the same with the man. The brothers paused for a brief moment before Dean patted Sam lightly on the shoulder as a signal for them to leave, and they began to move out of the cave again.

"What about the others?" Sam asked. "The other children, where are they?"

Dean glanced over at Sam, but didn't answer him. Instead, Dean turned away from the direction to the exit and began to head deeper into the belly of the cave. The atmosphere was deathly silent, and Sam was forced to turn on the flashlight he had packed along so that they could see.

After a few minutes of walking, Dean stopped in a larger chamber and looked around with a confused expression on his face. The beam of the flashlight bounced off the walls and landed on heaps of assorted colors of scales.

"They're gone," Dean said at last, and when he spoke, there was a definite twinge of pain in his voice.

"But where would they go? I thought they were going to die when the other two die."

"I thought so too," Dean admitted. "Maybe…I don't know…"

"Maybe if the leading two don't exist, then the rest of the children don't either."

Dean looked up to meet Sam's placid face and nodded slowly in agreement. "Maybe."

- - - - -

With neither brother in perfect condition, their steps were slow and heavy on their return trip to the motel. During that long walk, Sam finally spoke. "About everything that's happened…I just wanted you to know that I—I…didn't leave you."

"Sam. We don't need to—"

"Yeah, we do. Just give me this, please? I didn't leave because of you. You've got to understand that. I would never leave because of you."

"You want to again," Dean argued, refusing to meet Sam's needy gaze.

"Perhaps. I don't know. A lot of things have changed. I don't know what I'm going to do if we ever find the thing that got Mom. I just want you to know that I…" Sam sighed heavily, as if mentally preparing himself. When his cheeks puffed out slightly with the expulsion of air, the scabs of his wounds peeked open to reveal their slimy interiors. "Like it or not, you're my brother. You're going to be in my life, and I'm going to be in yours…And that's never going to change."

"A lot of that stuff I said…It wasn't me. It was like there was somebody else in my head."

"But they still managed to get to you," Sam pointed out as they entered the motel parking lot. "Somehow, they took advantage of something that already existed in your head, and I don't ever want that to happen again. I know Mom's not around anymore, and Dad's gone more often than not, but _I'm_ here, Dean. I want you to know that I am here."

They walked up to their room's door, while Sam pulled the keys from his pocket, and at last, Dean shook his head and smiled. "You done yet? Or am I going to have to put this on a greeting card and buy it for you for your next birthday?"

Sam unlocked the door and laughed. "That sounds like something I've been wanting to hear for days."

While Dean packed his belongings, Sam cleaned his wounds in the bathroom. It had only taken Dean a short amount of time to disinfect the graze of the bullet across his calf, so Sam was left alone with the gauze and stitches. When Dean had offered to help, Sam smiled faintly and said he would be able to handle things on his own.

Behind the bathroom door, Dean could hear Sam's controlled hiss at each twinge of pain. Even though he wanted to go to his brother, Dean knew it was better for him to stay where he was. So, he remained seated on the bed, fingering the edges of their father's worn leather journal. He thought of everything he could write in the neatly lined pages, detailing the attack of the monsters and their eventual fall. There would be pages upon pages to write, and every detail he could carefully record with the most pristine care. Instead, he lifted a black ink pen and scribbled the current date. For a moment, the pen was suspended over the page, and he wrote, _We learned to let go of what we could not control, and we learned to hold onto what we have. _

Then, as an afterthought, he added, _Our pain is only what we let it be._

After Sam was finished cleaning his cuts, the two brothers left the room with duffel bags filled to the bursting point. They threw the bags in the trunk of the Impala, which waited for them in the parking lot, and they went to return the key to the motel owner.

The old man was sitting in a rocking chair on the porch outside his office, and he was gazing off into the distance. When Sam and Dean approached, he rose to his feet and smiled, shoving his hands deep into his worn pockets. "Headin' off already?"

"Yeah," Sam said with a jerky nod, "I think it's about time. We've done all that we can do."

"How you feelin'?" the motel owner asked Dean, who looked up in slight surprise at being addressed.

"Doing better."

"That's good to 'ear." As Sam handed the motel owner the key, the old man continued, "You 'member the story I was tellin' you 'bout my daughter?"

"Yeah," Sam responded with slight hesitation.

"I had a dream while I was nappin' 'ere, that she came to me and told me that ev'rything was goin' to be all right now. Said two heroes had finally saved 'er." The man grinned. "It was a good dream."

"That's good to hear," Sam replied, fighting to hold back an overwhelming smile of his own.

When they had finished with the necessary small talk, Sam said, "Well, we should probably get going. Got a long drive ahead of us."

"Take care," the motel owner responded, sitting back down in the chair as Dean and Sam returned to their car.

Before they entered the car, they turned back to look at the motel owner one last time. Standing next to him was a young blonde girl with curly blonde hair that bobbed in the warm wind. She smiled at the brothers, and when she lifted her hand to wave at them, her image began to fade away. Soon, she had disappeared completely.

Sam and Dean stood on the opposite sides of the car, allowing the black, glistening hood to separate them. Sam, who leaned on the passenger's side with his elbows resting on the hood, slid the keys to Dean. Hesitantly, Dean accepted them and fingered the clinking metal pieces. He looked down at his hands holding the keys and said faintly, "We're not heroes, you know."

Sam chewed on his lower lip and looked back at the motel owner, who was already engrossed in a crinkled newspaper. The blonde girl was gone from their vision, but remained nevertheless. "No, but we're something better than that."

"Which is what?" Dean asked, lifting his head at last to look at Sam.

The late morning sun was high in the sky, and it illuminated the brothers' tanned skin to a warm golden glow. It was the sun of a new day and new truths. They had walked through the night with the lips of death whispering in their ears, and they had emerged alive and victorious into the day.

At last, Sam grinned and replied, "Men."

The End


End file.
